Knight’s Move

Christopher G. Nuttall

http://www.chrishanger.net
http://chrishanger.wordpress.com/
http://www.facebook.com/ChristopherGNuttall

All Comments Welcome!

Author’s Note

Knight’s Move is intended as a stand-alone book, but a sequel can be written if there is demand – please let me know if you want to see one, either through email or my facebook fan page.  

As always, I would be grateful for any comments, editing notes and suchlike.  If you find any errors, please send them to me in context.  For example:

“Their is a Tavern in the Town.” – ‘Their’ should be ‘There.’

Prologue

Commodore Jason Lopez pushed open the door to the Dead Dragon and looked around the bar, glaring at a couple of hardened bravos who looked as though they might want to try their luck.  He allowed his coat to fall open as he brushed snow off the fur, revealing his holstered pistol and spacer’s uniform; the bravos looked away, clearly determined to seek easier prey, someone who might not fight back.  Whatever else could be said about spacers, they were no cowards – and a planet like Frostbite, dependent on outside shipping, was unlikely to prosecute a spacer who killed a local who was trying to mug him.

“The war seems to have sucked away the real men,” Dana muttered through her communications implant as she followed him into the room.  “None of the ones here look like they could put up a fight.”

Jason rolled his eyes.  Dana looked like a child – and she was one of the most lethal people he'd ever met.  God alone knew where she came from, but she had enhanced strength, implanted weapons and a very nasty disposition.  If she hadn't been loyal to him, he would have quietly disposed of her long ago.  She loved to fight and she wasn't always careful where she fought.

“Or they went elsewhere,” he muttered back, as the bartender hastened to greet them.  “There isn't much here for a real man to do.”

“Sir,” the bartender said.  “Mr. Ford is waiting in the back room.”

“Thank you,” Jason said, out loud.  “Please take us to him.”

He gritted his teeth as the bartender led him behind the counter and through a half-hidden doorway.  It galled him to come to Frostbite, it galled him to have to deal with a man who had sent them little more than a retainer fee and a time and place to meet, but there were few other alternatives.  The Marauders had been feted during the war, yet now the fighting was over the rest of the human race seemed to prefer to forget that they even existed.  Even the Bottleneck Republic had turned its back on them.  They were an embarrassment.

They were happy to have us when the Dragons were breathing down their necks, he thought, as he caught sight of the Dragon someone had killed, stuffed and mounted against the wall.  It would never have been allowed on Earth, now that the war was over.  And if they keep demilitarising the way they have been, the Dragons will be breathing down their necks again soon enough.

Mr. Ford was either a corporate rat or an intelligence officer, Jason decided as the man stood up to greet them.  He was tall and thin, with a face so mundane that he could pass completely unnoticed in a crowd.  The chances were that he’d change his face the moment he reached his ship, wherever it was.  He wouldn't want any witnesses following him.

“Commodore,” Mr. Ford said.  “Thank you for coming.”

“Thank you for inviting us,” Jason said, keeping the displeasure out of his voice.  Once, they had been able to pick and choose contracts; now, they were dependent upon a very limited credit line extended by the few people who still remembered what the Marauders had done for them.  “We are at your service.”

Mr. Ford ordered drinks.  Then, when the bartender had left the room, he activated a privacy shield generator.  No one should be able to spy on their conversation – or so Jason hoped.  The presence of the generator was common enough along the edge of human space, but combined with the money Mr. Ford had already sent them it suggested that he had something in mind that was not entirely legal.  Jason’s implants analysed the privacy field and pronounced it solid.  He could only hope that they were right.

“My ... superiors understand that you are looking for work,” Mr. Ford said, after the bartender had returned, placed the drinks on the table and left the room for the second time.  “And that you are willing to do whatever needs to be done.”

Jason nodded.  It had been their trademark, ever since he had taken his armed merchant ship up against a Dragon corvette and won.  The small fleet he’d built up would go anywhere and do anything, provided the price was right.  They’d protected convoys, joined planetary defence fleets and even raided deep into Dragon-held territory.  And they’d acquired a reputation for ruthlessness that had shocked even the Dragons.  After the Dragons had nuked a tiny and largely worthless human colony, Jason and his ships had smashed a much larger alien settlement from orbit.  There hadn't been any further atrocities for seven years after they’d carried out the strike.

Even Dragons can learn, he thought.  We sure taught them a lesson about indiscriminate slaughter of human populations.

But now the war was over, there were calls – largely from the Federation – for him and his crews to be prosecuted for war crimes.  It was part of the reason he didn't dare take his ships through the Bottleneck and return to the Federation, even though there was no shortage of work in the former Occupied Zone.  The moment they put their ships into port, they might well be arrested.  Slaving on a penal colony was not how he intended to end his days.

“Yes,” he said, simply.  He took a sip of his beer and grimaced at the taste.  “What do you wish from us?”

“We wish to hire you,” Mr. Ford said, simply.  “There are ... tasks that need to be done.”

He dropped a datachip onto the table.  “And this is what we’re offering in payment.”

Jason picked it up, scanned the chip quickly and then accessed it through his implant.  A large sum of untraceable money, enough to buy a whole new cruiser if necessary, and a colossal manifest of spare parts.  Precisely what his little fleet needed to keep going, he saw; they’d even included weapons and equipment that the Federation, in the wake of the war, was starting to restrict.  If they took the offer, they would certainly be able to operate without having to break up or go back to the Federation.

“Impressive,” he allowed, finally.  Whatever they wanted in exchange, he knew, would be staggering.  “And what do you want from us?”

Mr. Ford told him.

“I see,” Jason said.  He took a long swig of his beer, wondering just what sort of animal had pissed it out.  “Who are you?”

 Mr. Ford smiled.  “Does it matter?”

“I guess not,” Jason mumbled.  For the money they were being offered, he would gladly have attacked Earth itself.  And some of the targets were places he would have hit for free.  The prospect of mass slaughter was not one that bothered him.  “I thank you.”

“The supplies will be delivered to your destination of choice,” Mr. Ford said.  “After that, we will expect you to start as soon as possible.”

He stood up and walked out, leaving Jason and Dana alone.

Chapter One

Commander Glen Knight looked around his cabin, struck – again – by just how bare it was compared to his bedroom before he’d joined the Terran Federation Navy.  The bulkheads were regulation navy-gray, without any pictures or anything else to break up the monotony or suggest that anyone actually lived in the compartment.  It wasn't much for a year as Ark Royal’s XO, second-in-command of the giant fleet carrier.  The ship would barely notice his departure.

He stepped over to the desk and picked up the handful of medals he’d been issued during his nine years of navy service.  Three campaign medals, including one from the Battle of Sphere Prime, and the Terran Cross – or, as spacers called it, the reward for Extreme Cleverness in the Face of the Enemy.  He looked down at them for a long moment, then carefully pinned them to his uniform jacket.  If nothing else, he had to be presentable when he faced the Admiral.  He brushed back his brown hair, then inspected himself in the mirror.  A lanky body, strong cheekbones and dark brown eyes looked back at him.

There was a chime at the door.  He activated his implants, ordering the local processor to open the door.  It hissed open, revealing Captain Thomas Smith and Ensign Yang.  The latter looked oddly disappointed to see him leaving, although she hid it well.  As XO, Glen had worked with her and the other ensigns to encourage them to develop their full potential; Yang would have been assured of a good career, during the war.  Now, with promotions slowed down and vast numbers of spacers being demobilised, no one really knew just what would happen in the future.  Glen silently wished her the best.

“Captain,” he said.

“Commander,” Smith replied.  He was an older man, with a short white beard; he was very much a father to his men.  Glen hoped that, one day, he would command the same level of love and respect as his Captain.  But Smith had been a CO for years.  “Are you packed?”

Glen nodded towards the pair of bags on the deck.  Like all experienced naval officers, he travelled light; there were clothes, a handful of datachips and a reader ... and little else.  Everything else he owned remained in storage on Earth, where it would wait until he came back to claim it.  There was no point in dragging it from ship to ship.

“Yes, sir,” he said, feeling an odd moment of bitterness.  He would miss the Captain – and the crew.  Their bonds had been forged by years of fighting ... and then helping to keep the uneasy peace that had followed the war.  “I’m ready.”

The Captain nodded to Yang.  “Ensign, take the XO’s bags to the shuttle,” he ordered.  “Tell the pilot we will be along in twenty minutes.”

Glen watched her pick up the bags and leave the compartment.  Yang was so damned young, with long black hair, a vaguely oriental face and a smile that had turned more than a few heads.  She’d missed the war completely and lacked the scars it had left on the more experienced officers and crewmen.  Glen couldn't help wondering how she would fare in the post-war navy, without a strong patron to help her career.  But it was no longer his problem.

“It’s been a pleasure to have you as my XO,” the Captain said, once they were alone.  “And I hope that your new command will be satisfying.  First commands are always special.”

“Yes, sir,” Glen said, again.  He’d been told that he was being promoted to Captain, but little else.  His new command might be a destroyer – God knew there was plenty of work for the smaller ships these days – or a cruiser; whatever it was, it would be very different from the giant fleet carrier.  “And thank you for everything you’ve done for me.”

The Captain smiled and led him through the hatch and down through a maze of corridors.  Glen had found them confusing, at first; now, he knew Ark Royal like the back of his hand.  His new ship would probably be simpler, he reminded himself.  And besides, there were always the deck plans loaded into his implants.

They stepped into the shuttlebay and paused.  Ark Royal’s senior crew were waiting for them, standing in line.  Glen felt an odd sensation in his throat as they saluted him and, once he returned their salute, gathered round to shake his hand and wish him luck.  By the time he climbed into the shuttle, he felt thoroughly miserable.  Maybe he was being promoted – an independent command was the dream of every ambitious naval officer – but he would miss his former shipmates.  He forced himself to sit quietly as the shuttle rose from the deck and passed out through the force field keeping the starship’s atmosphere safely inside the hull.

The pilot performed a single circuit of the mighty carrier and then took the shuttle down towards Luna Base.  Four hundred years of settlement had left Earth’s moon covered in human colonies, although the grand plan to actually give Luna a viable atmosphere had been shelved because of the war.  Hundreds of decommissioned starships, some of them clearly being cannibalised by the navy’s reduced workforce, hung in orbit, no longer part of the greatest military machine the galaxy had ever known.  The fleet that humanity had built up to crush the Dragons and liberate the Occupied Zone was being cut to the bone.

“Hell of a shame, sir,” the pilot said, as they passed a fleet carrier.  She was Ark Royal’s twin, Glen saw; she was a veteran of several of the most brutal battles of the war.  And now she was being stripped bare to keep the rest of the fleet operational.  “She deserves better than that.”

“Yes,” Glen agreed.  The sight of a flight deck hanging open to vacuum chilled him, even though he knew that the fleet carrier was unmanned.  “Hell of a shame.”

Luna Base itself was a colossal fortress, defended by heavy weapons emplacements that could have swept most of the orbiting starships out of space within minutes.  Glen watched some of the smaller weapons tracking the shuttle as it came in to land, silently praying that the IFF system worked and the shuttle was correctly identified before it entered automatic engagement range.  The Dragons who had refused to surrender when the war came to an end were known for suicide attacks, including some mounted in captured human spacecraft.  It was unlikely they could do anything to change the outcome of the war, but they didn't seem to care.  Human terrorists had been no less irrational.

The shuttle passed through without incident and came to land on a small landing pad.  Glen nodded his thanks to the pilot, stood and stepped out of the hatch as it hissed open.  Luna Base’s atmosphere greeted him, a faint tang of ... something that was unique to the moon, no matter what they did to counter it.  All worlds smelled different, Glen knew, but there was something strange about Luna’s atmosphere.  By now, the smell was a virtual tradition.

“Commander Knight,” a young woman said.  Glen glanced at her uniform and saw that she was a Captain, although not a starship commander.  He couldn't help a flicker of disapproval when he realised that her jacket was tighter than regulations technically allowed.  “I’m Captain Desjardins.  Admiral Patterson wishes to see you as soon as you arrive.”

“Thank you,” Glen said.  

He swallowed the urge to ask questions as he followed her through a series of corridors and a handful of security checks.  It was hard to escape the sense that Luna Base was no longer on a war footing; the last time he’d visited, there had been a physical search and his implants had been ruthlessly interrogated before he’d been allowed to proceed.  The drab bulkheads he remembered had been decorated with paintings of various naval battles.  Glen had to smile as he caught sight of an idealised representation of the Raid on Dragon-93.  He’d fought in that battle and it had been nothing like the painting.  But somehow he doubted that the painter was an experienced naval officer.

A hatch, guarded by a couple of armed Marines, hissed open as they approached.  “Good luck, Commander,” Captain Desjardins said.  “I’ll be waiting for you outside.”

Glen nodded and stepped into the Admiral’s office.  Inside, the walls were covered with certificates and decorations; the office itself was staggeringly luxurious.  Glen couldn't help feeling that Admiral Patterson, who had only recently been promoted to Chief of Naval Operations, was more concerned with his own comfort than actually leading the Terran Federation Navy.  Admiral Webster, who had commanded the fleet during the war, would not have stood for it.  But the war was over and Patterson, who rumour claimed had made a career of accommodating himself to the politicians, was the new CNO.

“Please, be seated,” Patterson said, once Glen had saluted.  “There is much to discuss with you.”

“Thank you, sir,” Glen said.

He sat, gingerly.  In his experience, a senior officer being so polite generally meant one of two things ... and there was no prospect of a suicide mission now that the war was over.  A disturbingly young Ensign appeared out of a side door carrying two mugs of hot coffee, which she placed on the desk in front of them.  Glen couldn't help feeling that she should still be in school, not serving in the navy.  But conscription had pushed far too many young men and women into the service.  

Admiral Patterson was a middle-aged man, slowly turning to fat.  Not a fighting admiral, according to the files in Glen’s implants; his career had largely been spent in the Logistics Directorate, where he’d been highly commended for ensuring that the ships and crews on the front lines got everything they needed from the Federation’s massive industrial base.  Glen wasn't foolish enough to think that everyone who didn't serve on the front lines was the enemy, even more than the Dragons, but it still bothered him to see such an officer in command of the Navy.  He might well have no idea of the true capabilities – and limitations – of the men under his command.

And he might well have links that stretched outside the Navy.

“It is the unanimous decision of the Promotions Board that you are hereby promoted to Captain and placed in command of TFS Dauntless,” Admiral Patterson said, once he had taken a sip of his coffee.  “Dauntless is one of our newest heavy cruisers, fresh from the Mars Shipyard.  She will make you a very happy Captain indeed.”

Glen frowned as his implant received a file.  Quickly, he reviewed it; Dauntless was a fine ship, but she was too impressive a command for a fresh Captain, no matter how impressive his career.  A number of young officers had succeeded to command after their seniors had been killed – and had been allowed to remain in command – but that had been during the war.  Now, with promotions slowed down to a glacial pace, he knew that too many people would assume that favouritism had played a role in his promotion.  And, given Admiral Patterson’s former position, it was almost certain that it had.

He fought to keep his face expressionless, despite his mounting dismay.  No one would question his assignment to a destroyer, a light cruiser or even an escort carrier.  But a heavy cruiser was too much.  Even if his war record had been staggeringly impressive – and he knew that it wasn't that impressive – it would stink like Limburger.  Or the interior of a Dragon starship.

His mind raced as he considered options.  He could refuse the command ... and his refusal would be honoured, at the price of never being offered command again.  The Navy would not question the judgement of an officer who felt himself unsuited to command.  Indeed, it would ensure that such an officer spent the rest of his career somewhere he could do no harm.  All he could do was accept the command and try to make the best of it.

“Thank you, sir,” he said, finally.

The Admiral reached into his desk and produced a small black box, which he passed to Glen.  Glen took it and opened it to see a tiny golden starship, representing a starship command.  He couldn't help feeling a frisson of excitement as he pulled it loose, removed his silver XO badge from his collar and pinned the golden starship into place.  No one, but starship commanders wore golden starships.  It was the badge of command.

“Congratulations, Captain,” Admiral Patterson said.  He sounded like he meant every word, the bastard.  “But I'm afraid that your shakedown cruise will be no picnic.”

He must have sent a command into the room’s processor, for a giant holographic starchart appeared in front of them, centred on Earth.  Hundreds of tactical icons, representing Planetary Defence Centres, Orbital Weapons Platforms and Home Fleet itself danced around Sol; even now, with defence budgets being cut, the Federation had no intention of reducing the vast amount of firepower assigned to protecting Earth.  The Battle of Wolf 359 had only been eight light years from Sol.  To civilians, that was an insurmountable distance; naval crewmen knew better.  

The starchart moved, focusing on the former Occupied Zone.  “As you know,” the Admiral said, “the Dragons cut off access to the Fairfax Cluster for most of the war.  The colonies on the other side of the Great Wall were forced to defend themselves.  It has united them, but also bred an independence of mind that now threatens the stability of the Federation.  This situation cannot be tolerated.”

Glen scowled.  Normal space might be placid, but hyperspace definitely wasn’t – and the Great Wall, a hyperspace storm that raged through the alternate dimension, was almost completely impassable.  The only place where a starship could travel safely through the Great Wall was the Bottleneck, a gap in the storm that allowed safe passage.  Normally, a storm could be circumvented.  The Great Wall was so vast that circumventing it would take months of travel through hyperspace.  Once the Dragons had blocked access to the Bottleneck, the colonies had been completely isolated.  It had been sheer luck that they’d been left alone long enough to build up their own defences. 

“The situation is worse than you might think,” the Admiral said, breaking into Glen’s thoughts.  “There are hundreds of millions of refugees, to say nothing of Dragons awaiting transport back to their homeworlds.  The colonials are ... not too happy about keeping them anywhere near their own homeworlds, let alone the cost of feeding and accommodating them.”

“Understandable,” Glen said.  He’d fought the Dragons long enough to know that he didn't trust them – and that he would never trust them.  Their whole society was based around the concept of might making right.  They might not spend time whining about how unfair the universe was, but they would spend time trying to reverse the judgement of the war.  “They would represent a potential danger.”

“Not all of them are Dragons,” the Admiral said.  “And, in any case, the Federation has decreed that local governments are responsible for the care and maintenance of the alien refugees until a more permanent settlement can be finalised.”

He cleared his throat, loudly.  “You’ll get a more detailed briefing later, but the essential point is that the Federation wishes to reassert its authority throughout the Fairfax Cluster.  The alien refugees might have caught the imagination of many factions on Earth – the Liberal-Progressives in particular – but there are many other problematic areas.  Tax, the unified Federation law code, the debts owed to founding corporations ... even question marks over the Exile Code.  And the Colonial Militia is still building itself up into a formidable fighting force.”

They have always been formidable, Glen thought.  If nothing else, they had forced the Dragons to commit a whole fleet to attacking the Fairfax Cluster.  And, despite that, the Dragons had never succeeded in crushing the colonials.  By the time the blockade had been broken, the colonials had actually been going on the offensive.  

But he could see the Admiral’s point.  If the Colonial Militia was still being built up, it raised a single obvious question.  Why?

“Your task is to lay the groundwork for the full resumption of the Federation’s authority,” the Admiral said.  “You will transport the Governor to the Fairfax Cluster, where she will start tying the Colonials back into the Federation, then start patrolling the sector and dealing with issues as they arrive.”

Glen nodded, wordlessly.  The orders were vague, but that was to be expected.  Even FTL communications would take up to a week to travel from Earth to the Bottleneck, then into the Fairfax Cluster.  By the time he sent a briefing to his superiors and requested orders, the situation would have become much worse.  It was why commanding officers had broad latitude to interpret their orders.

The Admiral stood.  “Good luck, Captain,” he said.  “And may God go with you.”

Glen saluted, then walked out of the compartment.  A message blinked into his implants as soon as he was outside, inviting him to lunch.  Somehow, he wasn't surprised that the message had entered the secure naval datanet – or by the identity of the sender.  

“Captain,” Captain Desjardins greeted him.  His promotion hadn't gone unnoticed.  “Do you require transport to your new command?”

Glen shook his head.  “I seem to have a date in Armstrong City,” he said.  He was tempted to ignore the invitation, but he had a feeling it would be better to meet with his brother sooner rather than later.  The other reason he might have been offered the command was someone pulling strings behind the scenes.  “I’ll pick up a shuttle afterwards.”

He gritted his teeth as he headed for the tube.  He’d spent years trying to escape his family, yet somehow they always dragged him back.  And now they’d given him one hell of a poisoned chalice.

Bastards, he thought.

Chapter Two

Armstrong City had been evacuated during the early years of the war – the giant domes were hideously vulnerable to enemy missiles – but after the war front had been pushed hundreds of light years from Earth the population had been allowed to return to their homes, where they could resume their normal lives.  Glen couldn't help finding something vaguely surreal in the scene as he walked through the streets towards the Grand Hotel; the legacy of the war was far from over and yet the civilians seemed to have forgotten all about it.  But then, apart from taxes and conscription, what had the population of Earth really endured?

He frowned as he caught sight of a demonstration outside Luna House and altered his course to evade it.  A quick scan of the local news while he was on the tube had told him that the Humanists were holding a protest against the internment of alien refugees on the colony worlds, demanding that they be allowed to return to their homeworlds at once or be granted citizenship on human worlds.  The former was often impossible – the Dragons had badly damaged most of the worlds they had occupied – while the latter would not go down well with the colonials who lived there.  They wanted to be rid of the aliens as soon as possible.

Earth doesn't have a large alien population, he thought, as he reached the hotel.  They have no idea what it might mean to grant those alien refugees the vote.

The hotel’s security staff examined him thoroughly, then escorted him into the elevator and guided him to the tenth floor.  Glen rolled his eyes; his brothers had always been a little paranoid, not without reason.  They had enemies who might happily spy on their talks in hopes of snatching a brief advantage – or maybe even try to assassinate them.  Given how many problems Knight Corporation had had when Glen’s father had died, it would surely seem a worthwhile gamble.  And none of the next generation of the family were ready to take the helm.  

There was a second check when he stepped out of the elevator.  Glen waited impatiently – one of the reasons the Grand Hotel was so expensive was that private security teams were allowed to take over entire floors for themselves – until they were done, then rolled his eyes as his brother’s secretary opened the door and announced him as grandly as if he were being presented to a king.  His brothers were powerful, Glen knew, but they were far from all-powerful.  If they disagreed on something major, it could easily rip the corporation apart.

“Glen,” Theodore Knight said.  He was tall and thin, with gimlet eyes and a willingness to do whatever it took to keep the corporation going.  “Welcome.”

Glen nodded.  His elder brother had always talked as though he had a stick up his ass and it was too much to expect him to have changed, even though they hadn't seen each other for three years.  The war had taken him away from Earth, after all.  No doubt the family's influence could have pushed him into a nice safe posting at the rear, but Glen hadn't wanted to ask for anything.  He'd spent too long trying to escape his family.  

“Glen,” David Knight said.  He looked like a fatter clone of Theodore, his elder brother.  “It’s good to see you again.”

“And you,” Glen said, not entirely untruthfully.  David had no imagination, but he did have a mind like a steel trap and an eye for spotting places where savings could be made.  Glen had once called him a natural-born bureaucrat and David had thought it a compliment.  “I trust that you had a pleasant flight?”

His elder brothers nodded in unison.  They had a whole fleet of personal starships; if necessary, they could have bankrolled a small military force out of pocket change.  It wouldn't have been difficult for them to reach Luna; indeed, the fact that both of them had come suggested that this was quite important to the family.  Glen felt a chill running down his spine.  They might just have thought they were doing him a favour by leaning on the Admiral so that Glen would be promoted, but their presence here suggested a deeper motive.

“I’m glad to see it,” Glen said.  He sat down and crossed his legs.  “I’m afraid I don’t have much time before I have to board my new command, so ...”

“We’ll get right to the point,” Theodore said, gruffly.  “It is time for you to do your duty by the family.”

Glen scowled at his brother’s pompous tone.  He'd been four years old when their father had died, which had largely excluded him from the desperate struggle to prevent Knight Corporation from fragmenting.  But he’d found their quiet talks boring; going into the Navy had seemed the perfect way to evade a corporate desk job for himself.  And besides, it was good for the family’s reputation to have a young man on the front lines.

“You don't need me,” he said, feeling a hint of the old sullenness that had always pervaded his relationship with his elder brother.  Theodore had tried to take their father’s place and hadn't entirely succeeded.  “There isn't anything I can get you that you can't get for yourself.”

Theodore took a long breath.  “It was the family's wealth and influence that ensured that you were accepted into the Luna Academy,” he said.  “It was the family’s wealth and influence that smoothed your path to higher rank.  It was the family’s ...”

“I know,” Glen snapped, feeling like an angry teenager again.  “And so does everyone else.”

His brothers had insisted that he go into the Luna Academy – there was no way they would let him be an ordinary crewman – but he’d hoped that he’d passed the exams on his own.  The illusion had only been dispelled when he’d glanced at his own file, which had made it clear that he hadn't reached the score required to enter without outside patrons.  And, now that he’d been given a heavy cruiser with almost no command experience at all, people would know that he had patrons.  

“And you must serve the family’s interests in response,” Theodore continued, relentlessly.  “We did not pull the strings to assign you to the Fairfax Cluster out of the goodness of our own hearts.”

“Of course not,” Glen said, rudely.  “If you had any goodness in your heart, you had it cut out of you long ago.”

Theodore ignored the jibe.  “You are aware, no doubt, that the colonials are attempting to make their semi-independence stick,” he said, roughly.  “We cannot allow them to declare independence and leave the Federation.”

“What Ted is trying to say,” David injected helpfully, “is that we have strong interests in preventing the colonials from declaring independence.”

Glen looked from one brother to the other, then met Theodore’s eyes.  “Why do you care?”

“That is remarkably naive of you,” Theodore sneered.  “There is a vast amount of money bound up in the colonies – and not just those behind the Great Wall.  Should they start declaring independence, that money will vanish into nothingness.  The domino effect will then damage hundreds of corporations, including ours.”

“I see,” Glen said, slowly.

Knight Corporation wasn't the biggest corporation in the Federation, but it had interests everywhere, primarily concentrated in shipbuilding and shipping, heavy industries and colonial settlement.  Theodore was a pain in the ass, yet Glen had to admit that his brother had managed to save the corporation and then expand its facilities to supply the Federation’s war machine with everything from starships to energy cells for hand pistols.  But now that the war was over, those contracts were threatening to dry up.

No, he thought.  They will be drying up.

“There will be a general election in a year,” Theodore continued, his tone returning to normal.  “If the Colonials become independent, it will certainly give the Nationalist Faction a boost and do untold damage to the Federalists, perhaps even the Conservatives.  We must do whatever we can to prevent that from taking place.”

Glen tried to have as little to do with politics as he could, but he understood what his brother was saying.  The Federation was not a homogenous entity.  A large number of worlds, even small colonies, declaring independence would threaten the integrity of the entire union.  The larger multi-star political groupings might be tempted to follow in their footsteps, placing their interests ahead of humanity as a whole.  It had been those interests that had prevented a robust response to the Dragons when they had started their provocations along the border, back before the war had begun.  

And if that happened, he asked himself, what would happen to Knight Corporation?

It was difficult to say.  If the Federation collapsed completely, the corporation – and most of the other interstellar corporations – would certainly be badly damaged, if their properties weren't seized by the nationalist states and put to use elsewhere.  Even if there were no further departures from the Federation, there would still be a staggering amount of money vanishing into thin air.  He could understand, even though he didn't want to admit it, why Theodore was so concerned.  But his brothers had to understand that there were limits.

“I’m a Captain, commander of a single starship,” he said, keeping his voice level.  “What – exactly – do you expect me to do about this situation?”

There was a knock at the door.  It opened to reveal a young woman pushing a trolley in front of her.  Glen felt his stomach rumble as he smelt food, although he had never quite seen the appeal in the expensive foodstuffs his brothers devoured.  It was a display of conspicuous consumption that had bothered him even before he’d visited worlds that were literally starving to death, thanks to the Dragons.  The woman carefully unloaded the trolley onto the table – her short skirt revealed that she was wearing no underwear – and then departed as soundlessly as she’d come.

Glen rolled his eyes as the door closed behind her.  Theodore had no interest in his life, apart from the acquisition and wielding of corporate power; David simply didn't have the imagination to be interested in anyone other than his wife.  Both brothers ignored the food, choosing instead to talk to the youngest brother.  Glen stood, walked over to the table, and took a slice of bread and meat.  It would probably have upset them to realise that something very similar could be bought for under a dollar or two, only a few metres from the hotel.

“The Governor – who will be travelling on your starship – is one of our placemen,” Theodore informed him.  His gaze followed Glen as he filled his plate.  “Chandra Wu has a long career behind her, one where she has satisfied both the demands of her posts and those of her patrons.  We expect that she will succeed in bringing the colonials back into the fold.”

And obtain plenty of contracts for Knight Corporation as well, Glen thought, cynically.  The people who went to the new colony worlds were often very poor, but the colonies themselves were quite solid investments.  It was rare for a colony mission to actually fail.  The ones that did often hadn't had a proper development corporation behind them.  And yet ... most of the colonies on the other side of the Great Wall had had only limited investment.  There might be fewer pickings for Knight Corporation than Theodore had assumed.

“I see,” he said, simply.

He wasn't sure how he felt about it.  His brothers had interfered in his life again, interfered so blatantly that he couldn't tell himself that he'd deserved his promotion.  But command of a heavy cruiser at such a young age ... his career was made, as long as he didn't screw up too badly.  And besides, he was loyal to the Federation.  Semi-independent states were one thing, but humanity’s unity was too important to allow the colonials to tear it apart.  That lack of unity explained why the early stages of the war had gone so badly.

“We want you to assist her as much as possible,” David explained.  “If she makes a decree, as laid down in the laws governing her position, you are to support it and uphold it and whatever else you have to do.  That is your sole priority.”

“My first priority is the safety of my ship and her crew,” Glen snapped.  Both of his brothers looked politely uncomprehending.  “I will not endanger them purely to suit your agenda.”

“You will do as the family requires,” Theodore snapped back, with equal force.  “That is your first priority.”

“You are not being asked to endanger your crew,” David said, trying to pour oil on troubled waters.  “We just require you to support our agenda.”

“I will do as I see fit,” Glen informed them.  “But like I said, my ship comes first.”

“Acceptable,” Theodore said, after a brief glance at David.  It was considered rude to use implants to talk secretly when others were in the same room, but neither of them had to care about what others considered to be rude.  “If you will take this file ...”

Glen’s implants reported that Theodore’s implants were opening a channel.  He accepted the file, waited for his implants to scan it for viruses and other unpleasant surprises, then opened the file and scanned the headings.  It was a biography of Governor Chandra Wu and her staff, all of whom were apparently loyal to her – and to her political patrons.  The Governor looked to have modified her face to reflect strength and determination, combined with a certain vulnerability that would appeal to men.  Glen suspected, just looking at the picture, that they would not get on.  There was something inherently dishonest in modifying one’s face for political purposes.

“She's a Liberal-Progressive,” he noted, with some surprise.  “I would have expected a Federalist.”

“The Federalists would raise hackles,” David said.  Beside him, Theodore looked unhappy, even mutinous.  “And besides, Wu is known for being power-hungry.  She will not betray us.”

Glen nodded.  In his experience, all politicians were power-hungry – and none of them would willingly bite the hand that fed them.  But he could understand Theodore’s concerns, even if a Liberal-Progressive would seem be more accommodating to the colonials than a Federalist.  A politician whose ideology clashed too much with that of her patrons could never be trusted, not entirely.  He skimmed through the file and noted that Wu was actually on the outskirts of the Liberal-Progressive Faction.  They probably didn't trust her either.

“She was responsible for feeding the refugees outside the Occupied Zone,” he said.  “But the file doesn't go into many details.”

He gritted his teeth, remembering some of his post-war duties.  Millions of refugees had fled their homeworlds as the Dragons advanced, mostly ending up in makeshift refugee camps on unoccupied worlds.  Many of them had gone into the military, but the remainder had been a major problem.  Families had been broken up; there were kids who might never see their parents again, assuming that their parents had also escaped.  Getting them all back where they belonged was a nightmare that would take years to resolve.

“It wouldn't,” David said.  “There are aspects of the whole operation that remain classified.”

Glen looked at David, then switched his attention to Theodore.  “There were ... disputes over how best to proceed,” Theodore explained, crossly.  “Wu was one of those who ended up being moved to another department.  It didn't damage her career.”

But it did have some effect on her, Glen guessed.  No wonder she was tempted to take whatever Theodore offered in exchange for her service.

“Brilliant,” he said, out loud.  He would need to try to obtain the information, even if it was classified.  Somehow, he doubted that Wu’s involvement in the whole affair was unknown outside the government.  “Can you find me a complete file?”

Theodore and David exchanged glances.  “We can try,” Theodore said, finally.  “But we expect you to work with her, whatever happens.”

“I can try,” Glen said.  Dealing with his brothers always brought out the worst in him.  Still, he would have bet good money that they knew the full story – and were refusing to share it with him, for whatever reason made sense to them.  “But you do realise that the entire political situation is unstable?”

“Of course,” Theodore said.  “That is, I believe, why you are being assigned to the Fairfax Cluster.”

“Admiral Webster would have been a far better bet for Governor,” Glen pointed out.  The Admiral hadn't always been liked, but just about everyone respected him.  “I believe the colonials would have preferred him.”

“What they might prefer is not important,” Theodore said.  His voice was very cold.  He would happily ride roughshod over the colonies as long as he got what he wanted out of the whole affair.  “Our priority is ensuring that Knight Corporation comes out of the post-war chaos in a position to capitalise on the end of the war.  Whatever it takes, we have to survive.”

Glen took a bite of his food, thinking hard.  There were political undercurrents at work, he was sure.  He’d spent long enough in the military to sense them, even if he couldn't quite see them yet.  He would have to watch his back – and that of his crew.  No doubt the Governor would expect him to bend the regulations in her favour as much as possible.

It was not going to be an easy voyage.

“The strong survive,” he observed.

“Indeed they do,” Theodore agreed.  He shifted, eying his brother as he'd done years ago, when Glen had asked for his blessing before he left for the Academy.  The memory made Glen shiver.  His brother had been the closest thing to a male role model he’d had until he’d gone to the Academy, where he’d met others.  “And we will survive.”

Chapter Three

“Commander?”

Commander Sandy Mannerheim rubbed sleep from her eyes as she sat upright in her bunk, muttering curses under her breath.  She'd intended to catch a few hours of sleep between duty shifts, but Dauntless was a new ship and problems just kept popping up as her crew tested each and every component.  Sandy was already keeping a log of glitches she intended to rub in the face of the yard master, the next time he showed his face.  It wasn't as if he was going to be entering hyperspace on a new and largely untested starship.

“Yeah,” she said, clearing her throat.  “What is it?”

“We just received a ping from Luna Base,” the duty officer said.  “Our new Captain is on his way.  ETA; thirty minutes.”

“Understood,” Sandy said.  She swung her legs off the bunk and stood upright.  Formal protocol demanded a reception in the shuttlebay, but half of the senior officers were busy and the other half were desperately trying to sleep.  Their estimated departure date was only a week off and they were still finding problems.  “Inform Colonel Armstrong and request that she meet me in the shuttlebay before the Captain arrives.”

She closed the connection, then pulled off her tunic and stepped into the shower.  Warm water cascaded down over her, followed by a gust of hot air that left her dry.  If there was one advantage to serving on a fed starship, it was almost unlimited water ... but there was no time to enjoy it, not now.  If their new commander couldn't have the full formal reception, the very least she could do was to be there in her dress uniform and hope that he was reasonable enough to understand why the senior staff hadn't greeted him.  They hadn't even been told who their new commander was.

It should have been her command, she told herself.  She had joined the Colonial Militia at fourteen and risen in the ranks, then transferred to the Terran Federation Navy after Second Bottleneck, when contact had been re-established between the colonies and the Federation.  It hadn't been that bad until the war had come to an end, whereupon competence and experience had been replaced by political connections, at least when it came to assigning promotion.  It didn't help that she’d been born on the other side of the Great Wall.  The bureaucrats on Luna Base didn't seem to realise that paperwork was a so-so thing for the colonies.  

She stepped back into the cabin and eyed herself critically in the mirror.  Her blonde hair had been cut short, a style that made her look severe; her arms and legs were muscular, while her blue eyes were sharp and clear.  The only sign that she’d been in combat was a nasty scar on her cheek, which she had never bothered to have removed.  It made her look intimidating to the new recruits, the ones who had never seen war.  Shaking her head, she pulled her dress uniform on and buttoned it up, then checked her pistol and facemask out of habit.  The Colonial Militia’s starships had never been as well-built as the Federation Navy’s ships.  Their construction habits were the one thing she would take home, if she could.

They probably wouldn't thank me for it, she thought ruefully.  It’s easy to forget that space is dangerous on a Federation warship.

Her implant blinked up a message in front of her eyes, alerting her to the arrival of a new file from Luna Base.  They’d finally gotten around to sending her the Captain’s file.  Rolling her eyes, she marked it for later attention and strode out of the cabin, heading down towards the shuttlebay.  Half of the ship’s bulkheads were still open, allowing maintenance crews to work on her innards.  She sighed in dismay at the sight, even though she knew that there was no alternative.  The end of the war had also put an end to agreements banning labour disputes on shipyards and other war-related industries.  

Bloody unions, she told herself.  Now that the war is over, they’re trying to claw back their power.

Pushing the thought to one side, she stepped into the shuttlebay and smiled as she saw Jess Armstrong standing there.  The Marine Captain – she was always addressed as Colonel onboard ship, to prevent confusion – looked tough enough to chew her way through iron bars and shit bricks.  She was from one of the Core Worlds, but Sandy had always gotten on with her.  Jess was fond of claiming that she’d been offered a choice between jail or joining the Marines and there were times when Sandy believed it.

“Our new CO is arriving,” Jess said, nodding towards the opening hatch.  Once, the sight had been disturbing; now, Sandy could pick out the shimmer of the force field keeping the atmosphere inside the ship.  “Did you review his file?”

Sandy shook her head, then accessed her implants and reviewed the file, skimming through the highlights.  It was surprisingly short; their new Captain had served on a cruiser, then a fleet carrier ... and little else, apart from training craft.  He didn't have any actual command to his credit, although he did have several awards for tactical bravery.  The Terran Cross wasn't normally awarded for political purposes, not after the last public outcry.  And he’d been at the Battle of Sphere Prime.

Her lips twitched.  She'd been there too.

The shuttle came into view, a boxy shape that seemed to be little more than a flying brick that shouldn't be able to move at all.  Sandy watched as the pilot neatly put the craft down on the deck, then deactivated the drives.  The faint hum faded away into nothingness.  She took a step forward as the hatch hissed open, revealing a young man in a navy-blue uniform.  He didn't seem to have bothered to wear his dress uniform.  It was, she told herself firmly, a good sign.  

She pulled herself to attention as the Captain stepped out of the shuttle.  He made no acknowledgement; instead, as per protocol, he formally saluted the flag painted on the far side of the shuttlebay, then saluted Sandy.  Sandy returned his salute, then relaxed minutely, studying her new commandeer with all the experience of thirty years in the military.  He really was alarmingly young.  And his face suggested that someone had engineered the best possible genotype into his genetic code before birth.

“Welcome onboard, Captain,” Sandy said.  She buried the resentment at the back of her mind.  Whatever connections Captain Knight had, it was unlikely that he’d personally barred her from further promotion.  There were more officers than slots in the years following the end of the war.  “It is a pleasure to see you.”

The Captain extended his hand.  Sandy took it and shook it, then introduced Jess, who gave their new commander a disturbing smile.  The Captain didn't seem to notice the traditional Marine game, but then he had been an XO on a fleet carrier.  He was probably used to the Marine tradition of trying to gross out the spacers, who never had to get down in the mud and get their hands and uniforms dirty.

“Thank you,” he said.  His voice was almost unaccented, suggesting that he’d grown up on Earth or Mars.  Earth tended to have the most blended accents in the known universe, a result of its position as the wellspring of human culture.  “It’s a pleasure to be here.”

Sandy nodded, brusquely.  “I’m afraid that the majority of the senior crew are currently on duty or trying to catch some sleep, sir,” she explained.  She might as well hit him with the bad news at once and see how he reacted.  “There are too many problems on the ship to allow us to relax just yet.”

She paused, waiting to see what he’d say, then pressed on.  “I can take you to the bridge and you can formally assume command, or I can give you the full tour.  Which one would you prefer?”

“The tour,” the Captain said, after a moment.  “I need to know just what has happened to my ship.”

“The shipyard was still too used to cutting corners,” Sandy said, tightly.  She turned to lead him towards the hatch that led into the ship’s interior.  “Which isn't too bad if the ships aren't expected to last more than a few months, but what little I was told about our mission suggested that we would be operating some distance from the Federation.  Right now, we are going over the entire ship in cynical detail and checking everything.”

The Captain nodded, ruefully.  Of course, Sandy reminded herself; he’d been an XO before his promotion.  The shipyards had developed bad habits during the war, when there had been a desperate need for war material, but it could not be tolerated.  If a vital component failed while they were in hyperspace, it was far too likely that they would never be seen again.  

Curious to see his reaction, she led him on a tour of the most important parts of the ship.  Main Engineering was a hive of activity; thankfully, they had tested all five fusion cores and discovered that they were in perfect working order.  But then, replacing even one of them was a nightmare at the best of times.  In theory, one fusion core was enough to power the entire ship, but she knew no CO who would care to rely on it.  They would certainly be unable to operate at full capacity without at least three cores.  

Tactical was a slight improvement; weapons and targeting sensors were one area where it wasn't easy to skimp on the basics.  But the training programs she had intended to use to ensure that the crew were brought up to standard had been delayed, even though she had thought that they were standardized.  Clearly, someone had decided to modify the system now that the war was over.  The Captain said nothing, but she could see his grim scowl flicker over his face before he hid it behind a blank mask.  He’d been an XO long enough to fully understand the value of constant training.

The only two compartments of the ship that were fully functional were sickbay and Marine Country.  Sandy showed him the sickbay quickly, including the rows of stasis pods for crewmen who were too badly wounded to be healed onboard ship.  They’d all been tested by the Medical Directorate, Doctor Gayle Foster assured them.  Nothing could be allowed to go wrong with the ship’s medical bay.

“I’ve also passed my xenobiology courses,” Gayle said.  She had started life as a civilian doctor before making the switch to the military.  “I can provide basic treatments for all known forms of intelligent life.”

Sandy scowled.  She knew that xenophobia was bad, but it was hard to avoid a basic distrust of aliens – all aliens – after what the Dragons had done to the Occupied Zones.  Most of the stories were nightmarish, ranging from mass slaughter to enslavement, collaboration and eventual genocide.  Humans had resisted, of course, but it was impossible to defeat a foe who controlled the high orbitals on the ground.  And, when many worlds had been on the verge of liberation, the Dragons had unleashed biological weapons on the remaining inhabitants.

She led the Captain to Marine Country, where a full company of Marines waited for his inspection.  The Federation Marines were renowned as the best of the best, the men and women who had stormed countless worlds, clearing the way for national formations to secure the ground.  Even now, with countless officers and men being told that they had to leave the military, the Marines still stood proud.  But then, there was no shortage of work for them to do on the formerly occupied worlds.

The Captain didn't seem nervous around the Marines, she noted, as he spoke quickly to Jess and her subordinates.  That wasn't uncommon, but he didn't seem to be blinded by his own arrogance either.  Indeed, there was something almost wistful in his gaze, something that confirmed her own thoughts.  Knight was hardly an uncommon surname, yet combined with his ridiculously fast promotion it was clear that the Captain had links to the Knight Corporation.  She felt another flash of resentment which she pushed aside, ruthlessly.  It wasn't as though she didn't have family connections back home.

In the end, they returned to the Captain’s office, which was attached to the bridge.  “I’ve been using it for paperwork,” she confessed, when he noticed the datapads on the desk.  “And handling a few other matters.”

The Captain nodded.  “I need to ask you something,” he said, as he sat down on the sofa and motioned for her to sit facing him.  “How long will it be before we can leave safely?”

Sandy considered it, recalling everything she’d had done since she’d come onboard.  “Maybe a week, assuming we don’t run into any major problems,” she said.  “The yard crews are the real problem right now.  We haven't been able to push them into working overtime and bringing in additional crew, it seems, is forbidden.  If we do run into any major problems ...”

“... We might have to put the departure date back a few days,” the Captain said.  He scowled, gracelessly.  “The Admiral will not be happy.  Nor will the Governor.”

“The Governor?”  Sandy asked.  “Who ...?”

“We are to provide transport for her to the Fairfax Cluster,” the Captain said.  Her implants reported that he was sending her a file.  She accepted it and started to skim through the headings, looking for the important points.  Their mission orders hadn't been transmitted to the ship either.  “And then we are to start patrolling the sector.”

Sandy winced.  One look at the file was enough to convince her that whoever had assigned Governor Wu to the Fairfax Cluster knew next to nothing about the local environment.  The person who had bungled the refugee crisis was unlikely to endear herself to the local government, which – after all – had saved itself when the colonies had been abandoned by the Federation.  Cold logic indicated that the Federation had had little choice, but cold logic meant little to the men and women who had put up a desperate and nearly futile defence.

“But she won’t make herself popular,” she said, before she could stop herself.  A certain degree of frankness had been encouraged in the Colonial Militia, but the Federation was a great deal more uptight about such things.  “This person will offend everyone.”

The Captain smiled, rather dryly.  “I’d tend to agree,” he said.  “But she has been given the job.”

Sandy made a mental note to send a warning message to her relatives in the Fairfax Cluster.  If they presented Governor Wu with a united front, perhaps she wouldn't try to break the unity of the Bottleneck Republic.  But, looking at Wu’s record, somehow Sandy doubted that the whole matter could be resolved so quickly.  The people of the Bottleneck Republic might only have agreed on one thing – they had to remain united against outside threats – but they clung to it with a death-grip intensity.  If the Dragons were no longer a threat, they might well turn against the Federation.  

“We will ensure that she has a relatively pleasant voyage,” the Captain added.  “Are our living quarters ready for occupation?”

“More or less, sir,” Sandy said.  “The crew will have taken your bags there by now.  Do you wish an Ensign to be attached to you?”

The Captain shook his head.  “No, thank you,” he said.  “I can handle my own dressing, I think.”

They shared a smile, mixed – in Sandy’s case – with a certain amount of relief.  She didn't like the tradition of officers using ensigns as personal servants, certainly not on small ships – and Dauntless was quite small compared to a fleet carrier or superdreadnaught.  And there were officers who took advantage of their subordinates, despite naval regulations that actively banned the practice.  It wouldn't have happened in the Colonial Militia ...

Of course not, she thought, ruefully.  We encourage our officers to look after themselves.

“I will formally assume command this evening, if that will allow the officers to attend,” the Captain said.  “Until then, I will go through the ship’s service logs and see what I can do to get additional yard crew out here.  If the Admiralty is keen for us to depart rapidly ...”

He shrugged.  “If not, we can delay our departure by a week or two.  It probably won’t make much difference.”

Sandy couldn't disagree.  Given the existence of hyperspace storms, no one – not even a politician – would expect a starship to leave or arrive precisely on schedule.  Smart officers always wrote a certain amount of slippage into their movement orders, just to ensure that they had room to manoeuvre if necessary.  If the Admiralty had wanted the mission to begin at once, they would have assigned another ship.

“Understood, sir,” she said.  “When will the Governor be coming onboard?”

The Captain grimaced.  “Maybe the day before we depart,” he said.  He didn't sound very enthusiastic about meeting Governor Wu.  “She will not wish to be confined any longer than strictly necessary.  It’s probably for the best.”

“Probably,” Sandy agreed.  She’d served on ships that had carried high-ranking officers and civilians, including reporters.  The experience had rarely been pleasant, despite the good food and drink her CO had brought onboard.  Most of them had either looked down their noses at the naval crew or demanded far better treatment than the ship could provide.  “How much do you know about the Fairfax Cluster?”

“Not enough,” the Captain said.  He looked down at the deck, crossly.  There were just too many reports for him to read.  “Can we go over it once we know when we will be leaving?”

Sandy nodded.  “It will be my pleasure, sir,” she said.

“Carry on,” the Captain said.  He nodded at her as she stood.  “We’ll catch up on everyone else later.”

Chapter Four

Glen sucked in his breath as he stepped onto Dauntless’s bridge for the first time.  It was hardly the first bridge he’d visited, let alone served on, but it was his.  A single large chair sat in the centre of the compartment, surrounded by a holographic display that showed Dauntless and the shipyard’s orbital platforms.  Beyond the chair, there were seven consoles, controlling everything from the helm to tactical and engineering.  The entire starship could be operated from the bridge.

Unless something goes wrong, he thought, ruefully.  In theory, a crew as small as ten men could operate the starship with the help of the automated systems, but they could be unable to maintain or repair the starship if necessary.  Ark Royal had had an oversized crew purely to handle emergencies, something that was currently annoying the bureaucrats, particularly the ones who had no operational experience of their own.  Surely the ship didn’t need ten thousand crewmen ...

The chair swung around, revealing Sandy.  Glen smiled at her, although he was pretty sure he detected a flicker of resentment in her expression.  He’d taken the opportunity to read her file, only to realise just how many reasons she had to resent him.  She had more years in the military – first the Colonial Militia and then the Federation Navy – than he’d had years of life.  In a just world, she would have a command of her own by now, just like the other officers he’d overtaken thanks to his brothers.  Glen couldn't help feeling excited at taking command, but he also knew that the way he’d taken it would store up trouble for the future.  The fact that none of it was his fault would be lost on his detractors.

“Captain,” she said.  “With your permission ...?”

Glen nodded.  Sandy tapped a switch on the side of the command chair, summoning the senior officers to the bridge.  Glen waited until they had all arrived and lined up in front of the command chair, then took a step forward, pulling a sheet of paper from his uniform pocket as he moved.  The traditional method of assuming command could not be sidestepped unless they were under heavy enemy fire.  And even then avoiding it would be regarded as bad luck.

He smoothed out the piece of paper and started to read out loud.  “From Luna HQ to Captain Glen Knight,” he said.  “You are ordered to take command of TFS Dauntless and uphold the duties and responsibilities of a Captain in the Federation Navy.  Fail in this charge at your peril.  By order of Admiral Rupert Patterson, Chief of Naval Operations.”

There was a long pause.  Glen silently folded the paper, remembering the first time he’d heard an officer use those exact phases.  He’d taken command, taken the powers and obligations of a commanding officer on himself.  Then, the young Glen had wondered if the new commander really knew what he was doing.  Now, he knew, his own crew would be having the same thoughts about him.  The CO was responsible for his ship and crew.  Whatever happened, the buck stopped with him.

He stepped over to the command chair, where Sandy was waiting.  “I relieve you,” he said.

“I stand relieved,” Sandy said.  She stood, allowing him to claim the command chair.  By tradition, only the senior officer attached to the ship could sit in the chair.  Normally, it was the Captain.  “Welcome onboard, Captain.”

Glen turned to face the other officers.  As if a spell had been broken, they clustered round him, offering congratulations and pledging support.  They all looked tired, Glen noted with a flicker of guilt; they’d been pulling additional shifts just to get Dauntless ready for space.  Once they were underway, he promised himself, he would ensure that they all managed to catch up on their sleep, even though there was always something to do on a starship.

“Thank you,” he said, once the congratulations had died away.  He’d skimmed their files, but he would need to go over them more carefully later.  Most of them had combat experience; a handful were newcomers, barely out of Luna Academy.  The cynic in him knew that they would probably get the experience soon enough.  “We have been assigned a complex mission.”

He paused, knowing that he had their attention, then continued.  “We are going to fly into a maelstrom of political chaos caused by the aftermath of the war.  It will require tact and diplomacy to ensure that the ideals and ethos of the Federation are upheld, without accidentally reigniting the war or starting another one.  I expect each and every one of you to do your duty and remember why we’re out here.

“Dismissed!”

The senior officers saluted, then headed for the hatch.  Glen watched them go, then stepped over to the command chair and sat down.  It was probably an illusion, but he thought he could feel the weight of his new responsibilities settling down on his shoulders as he sat.  He keyed a switch, bringing up the image of Dauntless, and studied it thoroughly.  His new command was a four hundred metre long dagger, floating in interplanetary space.  Her white hull was covered in weapons and sensor blisters, ready to track and engage the enemy.  The years of hard fighting had taught the TFN how to build warships and Dauntless’s designers had taken full advantage of their experience.  The next generation of warships would be even tougher.

He scowled, remembering some of the debates about the post-war mission of the Federation Navy.  Protecting humanity was important, of course, but so was exploration; the politicians, always keen to discover more human-compatible worlds, were already talking about funding new survey missions beyond the former Draconic Empire.  And then there was disaster relief, colony support and a hundred other tasks that could only be accomplished by the navy, a navy whose senior officers had grown to adulthood in the fires of a full-scale war.  Tact and diplomacy?  It hadn't been part of the navy ethos since the Dragons had started mass slaughter of human populations.  

With the ship at rest, the bridge was almost deserted.  Glen couldn’t help feeling a shiver running down his spine as he contemplated the empty consoles.  On active service, leaving the bridge unmanned was a court-martial offence; here, it was merely a reflection of just how much there was to do to get Dauntless space-worthy.  He activated his implants and linked into the local processors, then examined the starship’s current status.  Sandy had, if anything, underestimated the time it would take to get the ship ready to depart.  The yard dogs had not done a very good job.

“Dauntless is not expendable,” he muttered to himself, in annoyance.  “And we need those problems fixed.”

It was a recurring problem, which was partly why the decommissioned ships in Luna orbit were being cannibalised for spare parts.  The shipyards had known that most of the starships they produced at the height of the war wouldn't survive for longer than a few months, so they hadn't bothered to build a long lifespan into their products.  It had been a desperation measure, a solution that had produced hundreds of problems in its own right, but it was no longer necessary.  Seeing the habit continue in peacetime was worrying.  It put lives at risk as well as the Navy’s budget.

He downloaded the yard manager’s contact details, then skimmed through his file.  There were connections to Knight Corporation, he saw; not enough to be decisive, but enough to ensure that the manager would listen when he spoke.  The connections that had placed him in a compromised position might as well come in handy, he told himself as he stood and headed towards his office.  If he could bully the yard manager into sending additional crewmen to Dauntless, they could be ready to depart on schedule.  And it would take some of the pressure off his crew.

The Captain’s office was bare; there had been no time to unpack his bags and set up the traditional ‘I Love Me’ wall.  It was generally considered a bad sign not to have a display of one’s own medals; it implied that one had no medals.  But Glen knew that it was very much a low priority at the moment.  He could pin his awards to the wall later, once he had some spare time.  And the crew knew him a little better.

He sat down behind the desk and activated the terminal.  One advantage of being a Captain, he’d already discovered, was that he had priority codes to call almost anyone, at least in the Navy.  It didn't matter if the manager had his terminal switched on or off; the local datanet would still page him, insisting that he take the call.  Glen smiled as the man’s face appeared on the screen.  Clearly, he’d been in his office or somewhere else he could answer immediately.

“Good afternoon,” he said, briskly.  “My ship requires additional workmen ...”

In the end, he was almost disappointed by how easy it was.  A mention of the Knight connection, a hint that there might be more work in the future – or less work, if they displeased him – and the manager started to make arrangements to ship more of his workmen over to Dauntless.  Glen rolled his eyes as the connection broke, wondering just who in the Navy had decided to outsource starship repair and maintenance to civilian crews.  The Navy wasn't that strapped for cash.

Shaking his head, he called up a series of personnel files and started to read through them.  Lieutenant Commander Nathan Cooke, tactical officer, had a long string of commendations, matched by an equally long string of demerits and reprimands for speaking out of turn.  He was a superb tactical officer, everyone agreed, but it was unlikely that he would ever see promotion again.  Indeed, it was questionable why he’d even chosen to remain in the service.  A mercenary group would hire him the moment he resigned, if he approached the right people.  Maybe he was just loyal, Glen decided.  God knew Glen never wanted to leave the service.

Lieutenant Helena Li, helmswoman, had shown a talent for both flying through normal space and navigating hyperspace at a very young age, hence her streamlining into advanced navigational courses at Luna Academy.  Once she'd graduated, she’d helped chart the hyper-routes leading into the Draconic Empire, laying the groundwork for the eventual invasion of their home system and the Battle of Sphere Prime.  Her assignment to Dauntless made sense; the far reaches of the Fairfax Cluster had never been properly charted and the hyperspace monitoring service had no stations there.  She might make the difference between life and death if Dauntless was caught up in a storm.  

Lieutenant Commander Douglas Stocker, Chief Engineer, was ...

His thoughts were interrupted by a chime from his terminal.  “Captain, the Intelligence Officer assigned to Dauntless has just come onboard,” Sandy’s voice said.  “She requests to speak with you at your earliest convenience.”

Glen scowled.  Intelligence Officers, in his experience, were pains in the ass.  Maybe there was a decent one out there, but the ones he’d met kept claiming to know everything even when it was clear that their intelligence had been badly faulty.  Inserting spies into Dragon-held territory had been tricky, to say the least.  The handful of Dragons they’d managed to turn into spies hadn't been able to report much back before they’d been detected by their fellows.  God alone knew what had happened to them then, but Glen could guess.

“Please escort her to my office,” Glen said, even though he wanted to postpone the meeting as long as he could.   “I’ll speak to her now.”

He blanked the terminal and sat upright as the hatch hissed open, revealing Sandy – and a stunningly beautiful raven-haired girl.  Even in a standard naval uniform, she looked astonishing; Glen would have bet half of his shares in the family corporation that crew and officers alike had turned to stare as she walked past.  He groaned inwardly a moment later; Intelligence Officers might be a law unto themselves, but her appearance was going to be shockingly bad for discipline.  

She does it on purpose, he thought, remembering some of the corporate spies and agents his brothers had handled.  Thankfully, Glen had been too young for those games.  Every little advantage they can take, they will take.  And young men will talk freely to a pretty girl.

“Welcome onboard,” he said, pasting a fake smile on his face.

“Thank you, sir,” the Intelligence Officer said.  Her voice was low, almost sultry.  Judging from the look Sandy shot at her back, the XO didn't like her either.  She took the seat facing him without waiting for permission.  “I’m Commander (Intelligence) Cynthia Smith.”

Glen shook her hand automatically, thinking hard.  Was she related to his old CO?  Probably not, he told himself; Smith was a very common name.  But Intelligence Officers had sealed files, files even starship commanders couldn't open and read.  She might hope that he would jump to that conclusion ...

“Thank you, Sandy,” he said.

Sandy nodded and withdrew from the compartment, leaving him alone with Cynthia.  Glen studied her for a long moment – her uniform was a size too tight, something he would bet was uncomfortable even if it was also sexy – then leaned back in his chair.  Judging from her appearance, she wasn't here to tell him about alien threats, but to keep an eye on the crew.

Wonderful, he thought, sourly.  He hoped that no one else would make that connection, yet he was fairly sure that was a fool’s hope.  Sandy was far from stupid; there was no point in wearing a uniform that skirted the boundaries of regulations unless seduction was in mind ... and it was unlikely that a human could seduce a non-human.  There might be a whole series of tasteless pornography showing just that, but Glen had never encountered anyone who actually claimed to have done it in real life.

“Commander,” he said.  There was no point in trying to cross verbal swords with an Intelligence Officer.  They tended to be better at it than regular naval personnel.  “I shall be blunt.  Why have you been assigned to this ship?”

“I have been ordered to be completely frank with you,” Cynthia replied.  If she was surprised by the question, she didn't show it.  But chances were that she had been trained to show only what she wanted to show.  “There are ... factions that are concerned with the Fairfax Cluster, who believe that it is rapidly becoming a powder keg.”

“More of a compressed antimatter bomb,” Glen observed.  He’d barely had a chance to read some of the intelligence summaries, but the ones he had read suggested that matters were not improving after the formal end of the war.  In places, the war was still going on.  “And your mission is to ...?”

“Establish a formal intelligence network and keep an eye out for secessionist sympathies,” Cynthia said, bluntly.  “And monitor your crew for ... questionable viewpoints.”

Glen felt a flash of anger.  “My crew?”

Cynthia didn't flinch at his tone.  “There are some among your crew who may have divided loyalties,” she said bluntly.  “My orders are to monitor them and report back to my superiors.”

“Really,” Glen said.  He fought to keep his growing anger under control.  “I was under the distinct impression that nationalism was part and parcel of the Federation, despite the fires of war.”

“But there are too many problems in the Fairfax Cluster to risk allowing such sentiments to go unmonitored,” Cynthia countered.  “That sector isn't somewhere that might grumble, but remains part of the Federation.”

Glen had to admit that she had a point.  The nationalist blocs were largely committed to the Federation in any case, if only because they had enough weight in the Federation’s councils to ensure that their interests were protected.  There was more to gain through cooperation than outright warfare, as long as the Federation didn't become too powerful and started to overshadow the nationalist blocs.  But the Fairfax Cluster hadn't had such strong ties to the Federation even before the war.  Now, they thought they’d been abandoned and left to live or die on their own.

“There are rules,” he said, shortly.  “You will respect my crew.  I expect to see each and every one of the reports you send back to your superiors.  And if I think you’re crossing the line, I will put you in the brig for the remainder of the deployment.  Do you understand me?”

Cynthia’s face, for a very brief moment, showed a flicker of annoyance.  Intelligence Officers had a wide range of powers to spy on crewmen, even officers; the defeatism that had gripped part of the Federation Navy after the Battle of Starlight had threatened to destroy the Navy’s moral completely.  And military personnel gave up most of their rights when they enlisted.  But Glen would never be comfortable with spying on his own crew ...

“People grumble,” he said flatly.  God knew he’d grumbled, bitched and moaned himself in the past, when he had been a junior officer.  “I do not wish to use such grumbles used as evidence of a deadly plot.  Do you understand me?”

“Yes, sir,” Cynthia said, tightly.  “However, it is my duty ...”

“To do as you are told by the commanding officer of this ship,” Glen snapped.  Whatever else could be said about their wide-ranging authority, Intelligence Officers were never part of the chain of command.  The youngest ensign on the ship would take command before Cynthia, if a freak accident killed everyone higher up the chain.  “The XO has assigned you a cabin.  I suggest that you remain there until we are finally ready to depart.”

He watched her go, unable to help noticing that her trousers were tight too, then rubbed his forehead.  The mission was going to be hard enough – he’d known that as soon as he realised that his brothers were involved – but someone like her would only make matters worse.  She could easily shatter crew morale if she were caught spying on them.

Shaking his head, Glen returned to his terminal.  There was just too much work to do.

Chapter Five

“I wonder,” Sandy asked herself, “which sadistic bastard designed the dress uniforms?”

The standard naval uniform was light, woven from smart material that protected its wearer in all environments and, if necessary, could even serve as an emergency spacesuit.  But the dress uniform was tight, uncomfortable, and decorated with too much gold braid to be taken completely seriously, at least for an experienced spacer.  Maybe it had been a civilian who’d designed it, she decided as she set her cap and glanced at herself in the mirror.  It had clearly been someone without any real experience in space.

She stepped out of her cabin and walked down to the shuttlebay, where the remainder of the senior crew were gathering.  Sandy would have preferred not to provide a full welcoming party for Governor Wu and her staff – it was embarrassing enough that she hadn't been able to provide one for her new CO – but protocol was protocol.  A Governor was not only a civilian appointee; Governor Wu also held the rank of commander-in-chief of all military assets within the Fairfax Cluster.  She might not be expected to take direct command, but she could issue suggestions that had to be heeded.

As long as she doesn't start issuing orders to the Colonial Militia, Sandy thought, grimly.  The Militia was unlikely to be impressed by a civilian appointee, particularly not one who had no military experience of her own.  And she has no real authority over them, at least not in their own minds.

The thought made her face twist into a frown, which she banished moments later.  Her reputation for blunt speaking would not make her any allies among the Governor’s staff ... if, of course, they weren't already concerned about her homeworld.  Fairfax was a hotbed of anti-Federation sentiment, an understandable response to being largely abandoned during the war.  Sandy could understand, even approve of, the need for human unity, but it wouldn't work if larger human powers tried to bully smaller powers.  The smaller ones would grow to resent it, eventually sparking a civil war.  

“Captain,” she said, as Captain Knight entered the shuttlebay.  He managed to look good in his dress uniform, no small achievement.  “The shuttle is approaching now.”

Captain Knight nodded.  He might have used connections to get up the promotions ladder, but she hadn't caught him making a major mistake over the week since he had taken command.  Of course, he had been an XO and sometimes trespassed into her territory, yet she couldn't really hold it against him.  She’d once had a commanding officer who seemed to believe that he could hide in his office and let her do everything.  

And he had managed to convince the dockyard manager to send them more workers.

Dauntless was almost ready for deployment now, she knew.  She would have preferred a full shakedown cruise, the standard circuit of the Sol System that had been traditional ever since the human race had learned how to open portals into hyperspace, but that wasn't an option, not when the Governor was clearly impatient to be off.  They’d just have to hope that nothing went too badly wrong in hyperspace.  

She fought to keep her face under control as Commander Cynthia Smith entered the shuttlebay.  The Intelligence Officer might claim to be there to provide Intelligence’s view of the situation in the Fairfax Cluster, but Sandy suspected that her real reason for being assigned to Dauntless was keeping an eye on the crew.  As a former officer in the Colonial Militia, Sandy was definitely one of her prime targets for surveillance.  No doubt her cabin had already been bugged.  Cynthia might have been told to remain in her cabin, but Sandy had tracked her slipping all over the ship during the last few days.  

There was a dull rumble as the shuttlebay hatch opened, revealing the inky darkness of space, broken only by faint pinpricks of light from the stars.  It was a long moment before the shuttle appeared, illuminated by the starship’s running lights, and drifted through the forcefield to land on the deck.  Sandy felt an odd flash of Déjà Vu – just how many times had she greeted a senior officer on the shuttlebay deck? – which she pushed aside ruthlessly.  This was no time to lose herself in idle rumination.

The shuttle’s hatch opened, revealing a pair of Senate Security officers.  They advanced out of the tiny craft, weapons at the ready, then took up position on each side of the hatch.  Sandy wasn't sure if she should laugh or be insulted; did the Governor believe that armed guards increased her statue or was she convinced that Dauntless wasn't safe?  There was no recorded case of a naval officer assassinating a politician and hardly anyone else would be assigned to Dauntless.  It wasn't as if they were carrying a small army of reporters as they went to war.

Of course, she thought, as Governor Wu stepped out of the shuttle, there are worse things than reporters.

Governor Wu seemed almost patrician.  She was tall, with elegant cheekbones, long dark hair, soft brown eyes and dark brown skin.  The Governor had been born on Terra Nova, according to her file; she’d had certain facial traits engineered into her body when she entered politics, trying to create the impression of a woman who could be trusted to make the right decisions.  Sandy had to admit that the Governor knew how to make an entrance, even though it cost her a considerable amount of money.  The suit she wore cost more than a Commander made in a year by itself.

Captain Knight stepped forward.  “Welcome onboard, Madame Governor,” he said.

“Thank you,” the Governor replied.  She didn't offer to shake his hand, even though Sandy’s quiet investigations had proven that Captain Knight had far better connections than the Governor.  After all, the Liberal-Progressives had come alarmingly close to dropping her like a hot rock once already.  “It is a pleasure to be here.”

Sandy would have bet good money that it wasn’t.  Dauntless might be the newest heavy cruiser in the navy, but she wasn't actually designed for a pleasure cruise.  Even Admirals, when they flew their flags on superdreadnaughts or fleet carriers, had to endure small cabins.  But then, they were palatial by navy standards.  If the Governor had been expecting a luxurious trip, she was going to be disappointed.

Captain Knight introduced his senior crew – the Governor’s eyes paused briefly on Sandy before passing over her to Jess – and then motioned for the Governor’s staff to come out of the shuttle.  Sandy sighed inwardly – protocol rarely seemed more absurd – but kept her face blank as a pale-faced man emerged and was introduced as Harrison Montgomery, the Governor’s personal assistant.  Behind him, there was a mousy woman with short brown hair who seemed to vibrate with nervous energy, wearing a complete set of monitoring and recording equipment.  She was introduced as the Governor’s media representative, Windy Holbrooke.  Judging from her expression, none too well hidden, the military scared her a little.  That, Sandy knew, was far from an uncommon reaction among some civilians.

But not on the colonies, she thought, wryly.  There, everyone knows how to fight.

She wanted to shake her head.  As XO, it would be her duty to inform Windy that she had to be careful what she recorded onboard Dauntless.  There was no way to know what piece of information would provide insights into starship operations or technology for unfriendly eyes.  During the war, there had been more than a few security breaches that might have cost lives, if the Dragons had bothered to pay attention to human news media.  Thankfully, they never quite realised just how free the human media actually was.  But then, their people were only told what their superiors thought they needed to know.

Governor Wu nodded towards the shuttle, once the remainder of her staff had exited.  Sandy could understand a personal assistant and a media representative, but why would she bring along two maids, a cook and a handful of people with no clear job?  It was inefficient, to say the least; Sandy couldn't help wondering if the Governor believed that a large party would command respect from the colonials.  Maybe she did have the money to pay people to stand around doing nothing.  It still wouldn't impress people who could hardly afford such a display of conspicuous consumption.

A middle-aged man stepped out of the shuttle and bowed politely to Captain Knight.  Sandy couldn't help feeling a rush of affection, even though she didn't know the man; the colonial was clearly real, in a sense that Governor Wu could never match.  His face bore the scars of a lifetime of working the soil, then fighting to protect his homeworld from the Dragons.  The Bottleneck Republic had chosen its representative well.

But maybe not well enough, Sandy thought, sardonically.  Representative Virgil Feingold looked ... rustic.  To Earth, the core of the Federation and the most cosmopolitan planet in the galaxy, he would look like something out of the depths of history.  Unsophisticated, reactionary, a stick-in-the-mud ... hardly impressive.  It was hard to avoid the conclusion that Feingold’s mere appearance had convinced the sophisticates of Earth that the colonies were truly as barbaric as the media claimed they were.  

“Welcome onboard,” Captain Knight said.  The representative from the colonies had been added at the last minute, but the Captain showed no sign of irritation, even if they had had to rearrange cabin assignments at the last moment.  “My XO will show you to your cabin.”

He looked over at the other senior crew, who saluted the Governor and then dispersed.  Sandy couldn't help feeling that they were probably relieved that the ceremony was over.  The Captain nodded to the Governor, then escorted her and her staff to their quarters, where they would hopefully remain until they reached Bottleneck.  Sandy turned to face Feingold as soon as the Governor was gone and gave him a relieved smile.  The sophisticates might sneer at him behind his back – or even to his face – but she found him reassuringly real.

“Welcome onboard,” she said, and meant it.  “It’s a pleasure to have you on the ship.”

Feingold gave her a droll smile.  “Fairfax?”

Sandy nodded.  Her homeworld was the core of the Bottleneck Republic, insofar as any world could be considered its capital.  The Federation might like centralised authority, but the Bottleneck Republic had been too disunited even to consider the possibility.  Besides, the Dragons were fond of attacking sector capitals and core worlds and expecting the rest of the sector to fall without a fight.  If they hadn't driven in towards Earth in 2555, the war might well have gone the other way.

Or maybe it wouldn’t, she thought.  The Dragons had never really appreciated the true industrial might of the Federation.  She might have disliked and distrusted the Core Worlds and the interstellar corporations, but even she couldn't dispute their efficiency when it came to producing warships and war material.  Losing Earth would have been painful; it wouldn't have been fatal.  There were enough industrial nodes away from the homeworld to rebuild the TFN even after a desperate struggle to save Earth.

“It’s good to see a friendly face,” Feingold said, as she started to lead him towards the hatch.  “Chandra is an interesting conversationalist, but she never lets her guard slip around me and her cronies know better than to talk openly.  I was rather dreading this trip.”

Sandy nodded in understanding.  “Why didn't you take a different ship?”

“The Senate offered me transport on a military ship,” Feingold explained.  “I think they believed I would be impressed with the display of military might.”

“I see,” Sandy said, dryly.  She’d read Feingold’s record.  He’d fought in a dozen battles, including two that had taken place after Bottleneck had been liberated and links formed between the colonials and the Federation.  He was unlikely to be impressed by a single heavy cruiser, no matter how capable, not when he'd seen over a thousand superdreadnaughts and fleet carriers gathered in one place.  “And to stop you talking to others?”

“Perhaps,” Feingold agreed.  “But I did send a full report back via the communications network, so it would be pointless.”

Sandy said nothing else until she reached Feingold’s cabin and keyed it open for him.  “You might want to be careful what you say,” she said, once the hatch hissed closed behind them.  “There’s an Intelligence Officer on this ship, searching for evidence of disloyalty.”

Feingold made a face.  “It’s that bad?  Already?”

“I’m afraid so,” Sandy said.  She’d already heard muttered complaints from several officers and crewmen, including the Senior Chief Crewman.  Cynthia had been making herself unpopular without ever bothering to suggest there was a reason to keep her on the ship.  “I think this cabin is clean, but that will change.”

Feingold nodded.  “Tell me,” he said.  “Where do your loyalties lie?”

Sandy winced.  It was the question she’d hoped would never be asked, whatever else happened.  Was she loyal to the Federation or the Bottleneck Republic?  Or was she loyal to the ideals of the Federation rather than the Core Worlds or the nationalist power blocs?  Or, for that matter, the corporations?  And, if so, what should she do?

It had been easy when fighting the Dragons.  They wanted to reduce humanity to slavery at best, exterminate the entire race at worst.  She had few moral qualms over destroying helpless ships and refusing to take prisoners, even over bombarding enemy planets from orbit rather than forcing a landing on their surface.  The Dragons had committed thousands of atrocities before the human race began to repay them in kind.  There could be no compromise with such an enemy.  

But if humans fought humans ... which side was she on?

She could see advantages and disadvantages to both sides.  The Federation had fought and won the war – she was honest enough to admit that the Bottleneck Republic could not have won in the long run, not without the Federation absorbing the main body of the Dragon fleet – but it was also intrusive, prone to thinking that it knew best.  And it was largely controlled by forces that disliked the thought of independent colony worlds.  

But the Bottleneck Republic was a creature of compromise, quite willing to exterminate the alien refugees rather than tolerate them for much longer, and unwilling to assist people who needed it.  About the only thing that bound the republic together was fear of outsiders, be they Federation or Dragon.  It was easy to see why the Federation eyed them askance, suspicious that the Exile Code – among other laws – had been broken.  Or, for that matter, that the Bottleneck Republic was still building up its fleet.

“I do not know,” she confessed.

“That leaves you doing nothing until it is too late,” Feingold pointed out, smoothly.  “You have to take a stand.”

Sandy scowled at him.  Her father had come up with that phrase, which had somehow become a catchphrase across the entire republic.  In some ways, she thought she understood why Captain Knight had joined the TFN.  Both of them had sought to hide from unwanted family connections, even if the connections were likely to help their careers.

“I will make up my mind when the time comes,” she said.  It had been so much easier fighting the Dragons.  “What do you think will happen now?”

“It depends on the Governor,” Feingold said.  “I’m not hopeful.”

Neither was Sandy.  She’d feared trouble from the moment she’d read Governor Wu’s file and nothing she’d seen when she’d actually met the Governor had convinced her otherwise.  Governor Wu, Liberal-Progressive, was exactly the sort of person most likely to alienate the Bottleneck Republic and irritate its elected representatives.  Condescending, patronising, convinced she knew better than people who had spent their entire lives in the cluster ... it was a recipe for trouble.  She didn't know who had made the final choice, but it was one they were likely to regret.

Maybe the LPs thought they could get rid of her if she did a bad job, she thought.  It was as good a theory as any.  Or maybe they just don’t care enough to pick someone more likely to be diplomatic.

“I shall decide when the time comes,” she said, turning to head towards the door.  “But I dare say we will have time to chat during the voyage.”

“Of course,” Feingold agreed.  He gave her a smile that seemed completely genuine, unlike the Governor’s perfect pose.  “And thank you for spending time with an old man.”

Her thoughts churning, Sandy exited his cabin and walked towards the bridge.  The mission orders had been updated to include a small convoy of freighters that were being sent to Bottleneck and then deeper into the Cluster.  Dauntless was required to serve as their escort, something that worried Sandy more than she cared to admit.  Space near Earth might be relatively free of pirates – the convoy system instigated during the war had driven most of them out towards the edge of explored space – but the borders were still infested with the bastards.  Rogue Dragons, unwilling to accept the surrender; a handful of former colonial vessels turned pirate ... it was not a safe region.  One heavy cruiser couldn't hope to cover a small convoy on its own.

But they had no choice.  The request for additional escorts had been turned down.

At least the bridge looked more professional, she decided, as she stepped into the compartment.  Lieutenant Commander Nathan Cooke stood up from the command chair and nodded politely to her, then stepped over to the tactical console.  Sandy nodded back, then took the chair and brought up the convoy details.  At least the merchant commanders were experienced officers.  The last thing she needed was a civilian officer convinced he or she knew better than the military.

And yet her thoughts kept returning to Feingold’s question.  What side was she on?

Chapter Six

“We're picking up a final signal from the dockyard, sir.” Lieutenant Danielle Lawson said.  The Communications Officer turned to face him.  “They have cleared us to depart.”

Glen felt a frisson of almost childlike excitement.  Dauntless seemed to be humming as, one by one, the fusion cores were brought up to full power.  The engineering crew had insisted on carefully starting every system one by one, rather than a flash-wake, just in case something went wrong at the last minute, but everything seemed to be fine.

“Break the umbilical cords,” he ordered.  “And then bring up the main drives.”

A faint shudder ran through the ship as the connections to the dockyard were severed.  It was followed by a growing hum, a sense that the ship was finally drifting free in interplanetary space.  Glen monitored progress on his display as the drive field shimmered into existence around the ship, ready to take them away from the dockyard to a point where they could open a portal into hyperspace.

“All systems report ready,” Lieutenant Helena Li reported.  The helmswoman seemed as excited as Glen felt, her fingers flying over her console as she shaped and reshaped the drive field.  “Power curves are precisely as predicted.”

Glen nodded, unable to escape a flicker of relief.  An unstable drive field would set up harmonics that, at the very least, take years off the drive’s lifespan.  At worst, it would render the entire drive useless within a very short space of time.  No wonder that both sides in the war had experimented with weapons designed to set up such harmonics in enemy drive fields, even though they had been largely unsuccessful.  If they had succeeded, it would have been a neat way to shatter entire fleets with only small losses.

“Excellent,” he said.  He keyed his console, linking to Sandy on the secondary bridge.  “Madame XO?”

“All stations report ready,” Sandy confirmed.  “All systems are nominal; all non-assigned crew are off the ship.  We are ready to depart.”

Glen looked over at Helena.  “Then take us out,” he ordered.  “Nice and gently.”

Dauntless quivered again as her drive field slowly pushed her away from the dockyard.  Glen watched, silently praying that everything would work without problems, as the starship moved slowly through space towards the weapons platforms guarding the edge of the dockyard.  Partly civilian or not, the TFN was still responsible for its physical security.  The humming sound seemed to fade away slightly as the drive propelled them onwards, settling down into a recognisable pattern.

“We’re picking up a signal from the convoy,” Danielle reported.  “They’re in position to follow us into hyperspace.”

Glen scowled.  The flight to the Bottleneck would take upwards of a month even without the convoy.  With it, the flight would take six weeks if they were lucky.  He’d wanted to protest his orders when he’d been given the bad news, but apparently Governor Wu had organised the convoy herself and she didn't want to arrive without it.  There was no manifest – a breach of convoy regulations – yet Glen knew there was no point in lodging a complaint.  It was unlikely that the Governor would bring anything really dangerous with her.

Maybe she’s smuggling drugs or alcohol, he thought, remembering some of the more amusing scandals that had gripped the Federation before the war had concentrated more than a few minds.  There were planets that banned drugs, alcohol, electronic simulation and VR porn, all of which had been smuggled in at one time or another.  But he couldn't imagine needing six whole freighters to carry anything of the sort.  Besides, surely that wouldn't have gone unnoticed.  

He pushed the thought aside and smiled.  “Helm, you may open the portal at will,” he said.  “Take us out of here.”

The hum grew deeper as the generator came online, drawing power from two entire fusion cores into its heart.  Few starships could open a portal for more than a few seconds; only superdreadnaughts and fleet carriers could hold one open long enough to allow an entire fleet to enter or exit hyperspace.  Dauntless’s convoy would open their own portals and join the cruiser in hyperspace.  There were projects to open fixed gates into hyperspace, but the energy levels required to do it on a regular basis were staggering.  So far, they had never worked as designed.

He smiled as he linked into the sensors and watched as the portal blossomed into life in front of them.  It looked deceptively simple – the naked eye only saw a spinning wheel of light – but the starship’s sensors showed its true complexity.  Dauntless rocked as gravity waves struck her hull, then yanked her forward and into hyperspace.  As always, Glen felt slightly queasy when crossing the boundary into the alternate dimension.  There were civilians who never grew accustomed to hyperspace; it was petty, but he couldn't help hoping that some of the Governor’s staff would be forced to remain in their beds or a stasis pod.  It had been a day since she had come onboard and too many of her staff had had to be warned to stay in their quarters, rather than getting in the way.

Hyperspace was a roaring maelstrom of shimmering multicoloured light.  Glen stared at it for a long moment, then delinked himself from the sensors before the sight could overwhelm him.  Even experienced navigators had problems in hyperspace; it was easy to believe that a starship was right on the edge of an energy storm if one looked with the naked eye.  There were stories of starships that had somehow navigated home without sensors or access to the beacon network, but spacers knew that such stories were largely nonsense.  It was far too easy to become lost forever without proper sensors.

“The convoy has completed transit,” Danielle informed him.  “They’re standing by.”

“No encroachments detected,” Cooke added.  The tactical officer sounded disgruntled, unsurprisingly.  Hyperspace was so chaotic that an entire enemy fleet could be right on top of them and they’d never know about it until it was too late.  Few tactical officers dared relax in hyperspace.   “No starships within trustworthy sensor range.”

Glen nodded.  He’d been a tactical officer himself and he knew just how nightmarish hyperspace could be.  Sensor ghosts popped up with disturbing regularity; hell, there were people who claimed that there were entire alien races living in hyperspace.  It was unlikely, he had decided when he’d first heard the stories, but it was easy to see how they might have spread.  Hyperspace was just plain weird.

“Set course for the Bottleneck,” he ordered, as if Helena hadn't already worked out the course when they’d planned the voyage.  “Estimated ETA?”

“Seven weeks, unless one of the storms clears,” Helena reported.  The hyperspace monitoring network tracked storms, but their behaviour was still largely unpredictable.  One might die away ... or spring up right in front of them, forcing the convoy to detour.  Glen wasn't inclined to take chances by skimming the edge of a storm.  “Course laid in.”

Glen smiled.  “Take us out,” he ordered.

He settled back in his command chair as Dauntless headed away from Sol, towards the Bottleneck.  Whatever else happened, he was now completely free, unable to ask for orders from Luna HQ.  If they ran into trouble, he would have to take care of it himself.  It was, he knew, the joy and terror of being a starship commander.  The buck definitely stopped with him.

The voyage would be boring, he knew, unless they ran into pirates.  But the pirates would be grossly unwise to attack a heavy cruiser, even if they were renegade Dragons.  Even so, he couldn't escape the feeling that he’d wind up wishing that it was a longer voyage.  Once they got to the Fairfax Cluster, the real work would begin.

Summoning Sandy to his office, he stood up and turned the bridge over to Cooke.  The tactical officer took the command chair without demur, although Glen couldn't help noticing that he was still calibrating and recalibrating the sensors, trying to pull as much range as possible out of their equipment.  It had been his obsession too when he’d been a tactical officer, grimly aware that a smart enemy could use hyperspace as a cover and sneak close to his ship.  Few people would willingly pick a fight in hyperspace, but if one was already at a major disadvantage ... why not attack and hope that hyperspace would even the odds?

His XO looked tired as she entered his cabin, reminding him that he needed to ensure that she and the rest of the crew caught up on their sleep.  They could probably afford to go on a reduced duty schedule for a week or two, once they knew that everything was working as designed.  Glen didn't feel that he needed sleep, but then Sandy and most of the crew had been working for a month before he had arrived.

“We’re off,” he said, as lightly as he could.  He needed a good relationship with Sandy, just like the one he had tried to form with Captain Smith.  But Smith had been far more experienced than Glen, capable of maintaining the right combination of intimacy and distance.  “How do you feel the ship is performing?”

“Adequately,” Sandy said, bluntly.  “We won’t have full results for certain systems until we’ve run them for a few weeks, but it seems unlikely that we will suffer a catastrophic failure.  I still shudder to think of that crack in the fusion coils.”

Glen winced.  The fusion coils needed to be produced to exact specifications – and one had been allowed to slip through the inspection process, despite being cracked.  If they'd had it installed and gone to full power, the coil would have fused and there would have been an explosion.  There was enough redundancy built into the system to keep the starship operational, but it would have been a serious problem if they’d been called upon to fight.

“Let us hope that was the last of them,” he said.  It wouldn't stop him keeping his crew running checks on all of the spare parts they’d taken onboard, but at least it reassured him that they could detect problems before they exploded in his face.  “I need to talk to you about the colonies.”

Sandy looked up, warily.  Not that Glen could blame her, he had to admit.  Cynthia had been shadowing the XO for a day before Glen had become aware of it and ordered the Intelligence Officer to bother someone else.  If he could have done, he would have put Cynthia off the ship and insisted on receiving someone else, but her orders had been written by someone at Luna HQ.  Getting rid of her didn't seem to be an option.

“I’ve read too many briefings over the past few days,” Glen continued.  “But I don’t think most of the writers know their ass from their elbow.  What’s really going on beyond the Bottleneck?”

Sandy took a moment to gather her thoughts.  “The Fairfax Cluster, whatever the media tells you, was not considered a suitable place for investment,” she said.  “They looked at the Great Wall and decided that profits would always be limited, at least as long as the wall endured – and that could be thousands of years.  So most of the colony missions that passed through the Bottleneck were small groups seeking an independence they wouldn't have in the Federation.”

Glen nodded.  The standard way to deal with rogue or unwanted groups was for the government to buy them a starship and settlement rights to a distant world, then wash their hands of them.  Quite a few such groups had produced civilisations of their own, but others had died out or decided that they wanted to embrace the culture that had expelled them after all.  On the other side of the Great Wall, it was unlikely that they would ever pose a problem for the government ... although it might give the government a claim to their world.  But enforcing it would be tricky.

“The Great Wall doesn't block access from the Draconic Empire,” Sandy continued.  “So when the Dragons thrust into the Federation, they also attacked the edge of the Fairfax Cluster and blocked access to the Core Worlds.  You probably know how the colonies organised themselves and continued to fight.”

“And held the Dragons off long enough for the Federation to fight its way back to the Bottleneck,” Glen said.  Not for the first time, he cursed the Great Wall.  If the Federation had known that the colonies had survived, the TFN might have launched the relief mission sooner, ensuring that the colonies were more grateful to their rescuers.  “I know that part of the story.”

Sandy nodded.  “Well, the Bottleneck Republic sent ships and crew to the Federation, such as myself” – she waved a hand towards her chest – “to ensure that they were in on the kill.  And they launched raids into Draconic space as the final invasion began, helping to draw ships and defences away from the advancing Federation Navy.  But they weren't inclined to just subordinate themselves to the Federation after being abandoned.”

She took a breath.  “You grew up in the Core Worlds, so you may not understand just how much damage the Dragons did to the colonies,” she explained.  “They butchered hundreds of thousands when they invaded planets, enslaved thousands upon thousands of our people, moved in millions of conscript workers and forced us to fight like mad bastards to keep them away from Fairfax and the other makeshift industrial nodes.  I was there when civilian freighter crews took bulk freighters with bolted-on weapons into the fires of battle, just to buy time.  They all died just to win us a few more months of freedom.

“Even now, the war is still underway.  There are rogue starships hitting our convoys, enemy soldiers still fighting on liberated worlds and hundreds of millions of refugees.  The Federation may have declared peace and started to demobilise; the colonies do not have that luxury.  There isn't a single person in the Core who hates the Dragons with the intensity of the colonies.  None of us are prepared to consider the Dragons as anything other than the enemy.  Nor are we prepared to sacrifice to suit some Federation bureaucrat’s idea of how the universe should be run.”

Glen took a guess.  “Citizenship for alien refugees?”

Sandy nodded, reluctantly.  “I won’t deny that there were aliens who fought beside us,” she said.  “And they were rewarded for their bravery.  They have been offered citizenship.  But I do not believe that anyone in the Republic would freely grant citizenship to any non-human who hadn't fought beside us – and certainly not the Dragons.  We want them off our worlds, now.”

“Back to homeworlds that may not even exist any longer,” Glen mused.  The Dragons had occupied and settled at least a dozen alien homeworlds, scattering their former alien populations throughout their empire as slave labour.  By the time the TFN had liberated the alien worlds, most of them had been completely wrecked.  The Dragons had clearly never bought into the belief that their conquests should be protected, or their subjects treated with anything resembling human dignity.  But then, the slaves had been treated well by their standards.

Glen had read papers produced by sociologists who had studied the Dragons after the war, when it was fairly safe to travel to occupied worlds.  Most of them had tried to excuse the atrocities, or at least blame them on the Emperor and his cronies, but a handful had been more honest and pointed to their evolutionary history.  Compared to Earth, Sphere-Prime had been a desert.  It hadn't been until the Dragons had reached interstellar space that they’d discovered planets that were far more habitable than Sphere-Prime.  They hadn't bothered to waste time coming up with inventive justifications for conquest.  They’d just snatched, like kids in a candy store.

And it had worked well for them until they had run into humanity.

“There are other issues,” Sandy said.  “The Federation has become more ... controlling as it struggled to fight the war.  We don’t like that very much.  It’s a matter of some pride that we are more diverse than the Federation, even though the Federation has many more planets under its banner.  You won't find any support for extending Federation tax codes to the Fairfax Cluster or even any form of interstellar jurisdiction.   We have our laws and we live by them.”

She shrugged.  “I won't say that the Bottleneck Republic is perfect, because it isn't,” she added.  “We do have problems with aliens.  And some of our cultures are far from free.  And many of us are paranoid about any form of central authority.  I sometimes think that the only thing that keeps the Bottleneck Republic going is a shared consensus that it should exist.”

Her voice hardened.  “But the Governor is dreaming if she expects us to just bend over and spread them for her.”

Glen frowned.  “I have a lot to think about,” he said.  If Sandy was right, the entire situation was massively unstable.  Perhaps the best solution would be to invite the Bottleneck Republic to join the Federation as another semi-autonomous nationalistic bloc.  It might not quite qualify by the standard rules, but they had been stretched before.  

He looked down at his terminal as a message blinked up.  “And the Governor wants to hold a party.”

Sandy snorted.  “Who does she think will come?”

Glen fought the urge to laugh.  “The senior crew,” he said, seeing the invitation.  Governor Wu’s staff had clearly not realised that they had to check with the Captain or XO before sending out invitations.  “And it looks like we can’t get out of it.”

He smiled at her expression.  “Don’t worry,” he assured her.  “We survived the Dragons.  We can certainly survive Governor Wu.”

Sandy snorted again.  “Really?  And are we allowed to open fire on the Governor?”

“I think the rules of engagement forbid it,” Glen said.  At least Luna HQ hadn't rewritten the ROE yet, although with the Federation slowly returning to a peacetime structure it was probably only a matter of time.  “But perhaps we’ll learn more from her over the dinner table.”

By the look on Sandy’s face, she wasn't convinced.  Neither was Glen.

Chapter Seven

Sandy had been more than a little disconcerted to discover that Governor Wu’s staff had effectively taken over the conference room.  She wouldn't have objected – the compartment was rarely used while the starship was in hyperspace – but her staff should have asked her first in her role as XO.  Instead, they’d just moved in and started to decorate it for the Governor’s dinner party.  The cooks in the galley had not been pleased when the staff had asked to borrow their equipment too.

But she had to admit that staff had made the strictly-functional compartment look good.  The table had been covered with a golden cloth, fine cutlery and glasses had been laid out, and the chairs had been decorated.  Governor Wu herself stood at one end of the table, welcoming guests as they stepped into the conference room; she’d apparently taken the Captain’s chair for her own use.  Sandy couldn't decide if that was a deliberate insult or simple ignorance on her part.  The Captain, who was engaged in polite small talk with one of her staff, showed no visible reaction, but Sandy was sure that he was annoyed.  

“Please, be seated,” Governor Wu said.  Her voice rang out through the small compartment, inviting the senior crew and her staffers to the table.  Sandy had heard some grumbling, but none of the officers had declined the invitation.  It wouldn't have been politic.  “My staff have worked hard to prepare our dinner.”

Sandy could well believe it.  The TFN took good care of its officers and crewmen, but the general attitude to food production was to prepare as much of it as possible, rather than worrying about taste or fancy ingredients.  Complaints about the food were just another naval tradition, older than most.  The Governor’s staff, on the other hand, seemed determined to produce a meal that both looked and tasted good.  Sandy suspected that the whole process was inefficient, but she had to admit that it had its uses.  The trolley the staff wheeled in looked both decorative and functional.

“The wine is the finest from New Avalon,” Governor Wu explained, as her staff poured glasses and served the food.  “I’m not much of a wine snob, but I have been told that this particular brand goes well with lamb cutlets.”

Sandy wanted to roll her eyes.  A bottle of fancy wine from New Avalon cost about as much as a Commander earned in a year.  The Governor was either showing off her wealth or her political connections.  Carefully, Sandy lifted her glass and took a sip.  It tasted weaker than she’d expected, but then her experience with wine was limited.  Her father had told her, more than once, that her grandfather had been a drunkard and that she was not going to go the same way.  The teenage Sandy had resented it terribly; now, as a disciplined naval officer, she understood what he’d meant.  But it left her ill-prepared to comment on the wine.

She turned her attention to the plate of lamb that had been placed in front of her.  Real meat had been staggeringly expensive during the war, although she wasn't sure why.  Like quite a few other economic puzzles, it had probably been caused by the distortion introduced by the war as the economy had been switched over to war production.  Artificial pod-grown meat had been far cheaper for most families, even in the colonies.  But there was always something not quite right about it.  Real meat tasted much better.

“Tell me,” Feingold said, after taking a bite of his food.  His voice was bland, but Sandy detected a hint of mischief in his tone.  “Do you believe that feeding us up will win you supporters?”

The Governor’s face didn't change, but her assistant looked as if he were about to have a heart attack.  No doubt no one had ever cheeked his employer quite so comprehensively, even if Feingold did have a reputation for being an unsophisticated colonial.  Sandy concealed her own amusement behind a facade of blandness and waited to see how the Governor would respond.  She was actually mildly surprised that Feingold had been invited at all.

“I believe that good food should be shared to be enjoyed properly,” the Governor said.  Her lips curved into a smile that didn't reach her eyes.  “But if you want to support me, please feel free.”

Feingold smiled – an open genuine smile – back at her.  “I’m afraid I cannot be bought so easily,” he said, taking a sip of his wine.  “Not when the price would include the virtual slavery of my people.”

The Governor’s smile slowly faded away.  “The Federation has no intention of enslaving your people,” she said.  “We are not the Dragons.  We merely intend to ensure that everyone follows the same laws, laws which your people often flout.”

“But forcing your laws on us is a form of slavery,” Feingold said.  “We had no say in the formulation of those laws – nor would we have much say in future, if we became good little Federation members.  You are expecting us to trust to your good nature and many of us believe that you have no good nature.”

“The Federation is a democracy,” the Governor said.  “The will of the majority is paramount.”

Feingold snorted.  “Does history record a case where the majority was actually right?”

The Governor considered it.  “A majority of the Federation Senate agreed to treat aliens behind our lines as refugees, even to consider granting them local citizenship,” she said, finally.  “The alternative is either treating them as a permanently disenfranchised community or genocide, slaughtering each and every one of them.  Was that the wrong choice?”

“I looked up the voting records,” Feingold said.  “There was an interesting pattern in the votes, Governor.  The Senators that voted in favour were almost all Senators from the Core Worlds, where there are very few alien refugees.  They are not responsible for dealing with the problems caused by implementing the decision.”

“Greenway voted in favour,” the Governor said, immediately.

“Greenway is unique,” Feingold said.  “None of the other colonies voted in favour.”

Sandy scowled, inwardly.  Greenway had been occupied by the Dragons, who had dumped a large population of non-human slaves on the planet.  The slaves had been rebellious and many of them had joined up with the human resistance, fighting savagely to keep the Dragons from overrunning the entire planet.  By the time the war had come to an end, genuine bonds of friendship had been formed between humans and aliens and thousands of others had come to Greenway to settle permanently.  

But there hadn't been many other worlds where humans and aliens had fought side by side.

“That is the core of our problem with you,” Feingold pressed.  “You have made a decision that will affect our lives badly and then demanded that we embrace it, even though we know that the decision is not in our best interests.  And that is slavery.”

“We all have to make sacrifices,” the Governor snapped.  For the first time, there was a hint of anger in her tone.  “My own homeworld paid over sixty percent of its GPP to help fund the Federation Navy.  Right now, the aftermath of the war is causing no small amount of hardship.  Companies are downsizing, workers are finding themselves out of work and there’s a labour glut on the market.  Or do you think that just because they were never attacked the Core Worlds didn't suffer?”

“There's a difference between paying taxes, no matter how high, and fighting desperately to preserve something of your way of life,” Feingold pointed out.  “And all of your unemployed can be fed by your social security networks.  That isn't an option in the colonies.”

He took a breath.  “But that isn't our only problem with you,” he added.  “You want us to comply with all of your regulations.  Some of them are sensible, sensible enough that they will be added to our own laws sooner or later.  Others are designed to benefit the big interstellar shipping corporations, rather than our own people.  And the reason they are designed that way is because the corporations have too much influence in the Federation government.”

Sandy saw the Captain wince and felt a moment of sympathy.  She’d looked up his family and confirmed that they did run Knight Corporation, but the Captain’s record indicated someone who had been trying to escape his family's influence.  Sandy could understand that; God knew she wouldn't have transferred to the Federation Navy if she hadn't been trying to escape her father’s shadow.  

But she also knew that Feingold had a point.  The shipping rules and regulations, enforced by the Federation, were only a minor inconvenience to the big corporations, but they could be fatal to a small operation.  It didn't help that shipping rates had been laid down by the Federation during the war – and no one had yet moved to unlock them – or that the bigger corporations used semi-legal syndicates to keep the independent shippers out of the biggest markets.  The colonies were where the independent shippers flourished and few of them were keen to embrace the Federation’s all-consuming way of doing things.  Why should they when the regulations had driven so many of them out of work?

“Those regulations were voted into existence by the vast majority of the Federation ...”

“Only in numbers,” Feingold interrupted.  “You see, your Core Worlds all have vast populations, which gives them vast clout.  We would vanish into the Federation if we joined, becoming nothing more than tiny worlds for you to exploit.”

“You are already part of the Federation,” Governor Wu said, coldly.  “The Federation exists to give humanity a united government.  You are human and thus you are part of the Federation.”

“That’s funny,” Feingold observed, lightly.  “We never signed the treaty.”

“The Federation would defend you if you came under attack,” Governor Wu pointed out, coldly.  “We would do that because you are human.”

“But you haven’t been defending us,” Feingold snapped.  He didn't bother to try to hide his anger any longer.  “Right now, the situation along the border is chaos.   Our worlds are being attacked and raided, the refugee camps are unstable and we fear that independent Dragon warlords might be planning a resumption of the war.  We have even swallowed our pride and asked for assistance from the Federation Navy.  And what have you sent us?”

He waved a hand around, indicating the bulkheads.  “One ship.”

Sandy winced inwardly.  She loved Dauntless, particularly now that they had worked out all the bugs and replaced the unsuitable components, but she knew that Feingold was right.  One ship could only be in one place at one time.  Dauntless might be able to deter pirate activity in one star system, but she wouldn't be able to deter it in another star system.  The only way to deal with pirates and raiders was to flood the threatened systems with light warships, start a convoy system and hunt down their bases as ruthlessly as possible.  And, with the TFN rapidly demobilising, it was unlikely that the light units required for such an operation could be spared.

And they’d be on the other side of the Bottleneck, she thought, grimly.  That’s enough to give any strategic planner nightmares.

The thought was a bitter one, but it had to be faced.  There was no way to beam a signal through the Great Wall, which meant that any signals from Earth to Fairfax had to go through the chain of relay stations in the Bottleneck.  A handful of destroyed relay stations would make it impossible to summon those starships back in a hurry, if there was a crisis in the Core Worlds ... and the Dragons had shown just how easy it was to cut the Bottleneck Republic off from the Federation.  The Dragons might no longer be a threat – although Sandy tended to agree that some Dragon warlords might not accept the end of the war so tamely – but there were other dangers out in interstellar space.

“I believe that you are still building up your own military force,” the Governor said.  She made a show of quirking her eyebrow.  “Could it be that you protest too loudly?”

“Because we know that we cannot count on you to protect us,” Feingold said, sardonically.  “We know better than to trust you.   Not after you abandoned us.  Not while you keep ignoring our interests.  Not while our people die.”

But it wouldn't be enough, Sandy knew.  The Colonial Militia had worked wonders during the war, but the aftermath had damaged the colonies as badly as the Core Worlds.  She doubted that the Bottleneck Republic could scrape up the funds necessary to maintain the ships they’d built, bought or stole during the war, let alone continue to expand the fleet much longer.  What was pocket change to the Federation was a sizable percentage of the Fairfax Cluster’s overall income.  

The argument raged backwards and forwards, with no clear victory.  Despite her seeming annoyance, Sandy started to wonder if the Governor was actually enjoying the discussion – or if she’d had another motive for provoking the verbal confrontation.  It was easy to dismiss Governor Wu as a political placeman, yet ... she had to have some intelligence to rise to such a high position, didn't she?  And the Captain’s family would hardly have chosen her unless they thought she could do what they wanted.

Unless the objective actually is to start a war, Sandy thought, coldly.  Governor Wu could do that very well.

It struck her in a moment of insight.  The Governor was preparing herself for her task ... and the argument was showing her how the colonies thought.  Feingold was outlining the problems she would have to confront for her, knowingly or otherwise.  No fool himself, Feingold probably sensed the truth ... and might well be deliberately helping her.  Or was she overestimating one and underestimating the other?

The argument came to a halt as the staff removed empty plates and replaced them with small bowls of ice cream.  Sandy had to admit that the food had been good, although it had been rather minimal; she’d grown too used to being allowed to eat all she could.  But then, the Governor’s staff had brought their own food supplies when they boarded the ship.  Someone had probably told them that naval rations were reprocessed.  It wasn't a thought civilians tended to enjoy contemplating.  

“If you’ll take a word of advice,” Feingold offered, “you’ll start thinking of ways to compromise, rather than dictating.  Like it or not, we do not consider ourselves part of the Federation.  Many of our founding families were exiles from their homeworlds; others believe themselves to have been abandoned by the Core Worlds.  There may be grounds for compromise, perhaps for joining the Federation as an autonomous nationalistic bloc, but not for simple absorption.”

“By Federation law, that would be technically illegal,” Governor Wu said stiffly.  “You are not a single bloc.”

And that, Sandy knew, was true enough.  Earth’s various nations had founded homeworlds of their own, which had gone on to settle other worlds ... but the Fairfax Cluster had no unifying culture, nothing beyond the desperate need to defend themselves against the Dragons.  It was easy to believe that if the Federation was prepared to be patient, the Bottleneck Republic would eventually fall apart, allowing the Federation a chance to pick up the pieces.  She wondered, despite herself, if Governor Wu would sense that and refrain from taking action.

“But the alternatives are worse,” Feingold pointed out.  He wasn't pleading, but there was ... something in his tone that worried Sandy.  “Surely some compromise now would save trouble later.”

If it did, Sandy thought, cynically.  But she could see why the Federation wouldn't be keen on the idea.  What would stop other colonies from forming unions of their own and then demanding internal autonomy?  Nothing; the precedent would have been set by the Federation itself.  Besides, the blocs that already existed didn't want rivals.  

The Captain tapped his knife against his glass, silencing the table.  “Ladies and Gentlemen,” he said, interrupting the argument, “I give you the Federation of Humanity.”

Sandy smiled as she lifted her glass, then took a sip.  When she’d transferred to the Federation Navy, the toast had been to victory – and destruction to the Dragons.  It had changed shortly before the end of the war, apparently because of pressure from the Federation Senate.  No one quite knew what they had been thinking.

“Thank you, Captain,” Governor Wu said.  She stood up and gave him a slight bow.  “And thank you for allowing me to use your conference room.”

The Captain’s face twitched, but he said nothing.  Sandy scowled as she glanced past the Governor and met Windy’s eyes.  The woman had recorded everything, including the discussion between her employer and the colonial representative.  No doubt the recordings, suitably edited, would make their way into the hands of various news agencies.  The Governor would need political support if she wanted to move against the Bottleneck Republic and slandering their representative was a good way to start.  It would help to convince the ignorant masses on the Core Worlds that the colonies were populated by barbarians.

Much to Sandy’s relief, the dinner broke up soon afterwards.  She exchanged a brief glance with the Captain – they’d discuss the whole affair later – and then followed the other officers out of the compartment.  There were a few hours before she was due to go back on duty. so she headed back to her cabin, undressed rapidly and settled down for a quick nap.  The sooner they reached Bottleneck and Fairfax, the better.  They would be able to unload the Governor and then commence patrolling the sector.

And maybe we can do something about the raiders, she thought, as she closed her eyes.  That might do more good than babysitting the Governor and her staff.

Chapter Eight

Who, Glen asked himself silently, does the Captain confide in?

The answer was clear enough.  There was no one the Captain could talk to as an equal, or even as a friend.  Everyone on the ship was his subordinate, apart from the Governor and her staff and he would prefer not to confide in her.  Over the last few days, the Governor had invited him to tea twice, clearly in hopes of forging a relationship.  Glen had begged off the second time, explaining that he had no shortage of work to do.  The first private meeting had been a political minefield.

Damn Theodore anyway, Glen thought, feeling more like a resentful teenager than a responsible starship commander.  But his brothers had always brought out the worst in him; they’d dedicated themselves to the corporation, rather than to Glen or even their own children.  Part of the reason he’d gone into the Navy was a search for brotherhood, a sense of belonging that had been lacking from his own family.  But now he was alone.  There was no one he could just share his thoughts with.

There had occasionally been suggestions that families could travel on starships.  Those suggestions had only ever applied to long-range survey ships, which could take years to complete their missions ... and most of those ships had been recalled when the war had started in earnest.  There had always been rumours about hidden colonies established thousands of light years from Earth, where the human race would continue if the Dragons won the war, but no one knew anything for sure.  All that really mattered, right now, was that Glen stood alone.

He picked up a datapad and glowered at it, as if he could force the documents to fade away with the sheer force of his displeasure.  It never failed to surprise him just how much paperwork there was to do on a starship, even though the XO was supposed to handle most of the day-to-day administration.  He’d certainly felt swamped once or twice on Ark Royal, but Ark Royal had been a colossal fleet carrier.  Dauntless was smaller; surely, he told himself, she shouldn't generate so much paperwork.  But the bureaucrats had been clawing back power ever since the war had come to an end ...

The hatch chimed.  He scowled – he’d hoped for some peace to come to grips with the paperwork – and then sent the command to the room’s processor, ordering it to open the hatch.  It hissed open, revealing Cynthia.  The Intelligence Officer strode into the compartment and came to a halt in front of Glen’s desk, swinging her hips in a fashion calculated to attract the male gaze.  Glen couldn't help finding it annoying.  There was something about the way she did it that bothered him intensely.

But he had to admit that he was well prepared to resist her.  There was nothing like being a shareholder in Knight Corporation to make one irresistible to women.  Glen had been swamped with women ever since he’d turned fourteen, most of whom had been pushed at him by their mothers or had the lust for money in their eye.  He still cringed at the memory of having ‘the talk’ with Theodore, who had told him to make damn sure he always kept his contraceptive implant up to date.  A child born of his seed would have a claim to some of his shares, as laid down in the corporate by-laws.  Their father had been a firm believer in keeping power within the family.

“Be seated,” he ordered, returning the datapad to the desk.  “What can I do for you?”

“Certain matters have come to my attention,” Cynthia said.  She sat down and rested her hands in her lap.  “Are you aware that your XO appears to have developed a friendship with Representative Feingold?”

Glen shook his head, although he wasn't too surprised.  Sandy was, in her own way, just as isolated as himself.  Dauntless’s crew didn't include anyone else from the Fairfax Sector and she had to be feeling a little homesick.  According to her file, she had never even been home on leave.  Her accumulated leave time was actually quite considerable.  Privately, Glen had wondered if she simply intended to take a long holiday at some point in the future.

“This is a matter of some concern,” Cynthia added.  “What if he manages to convince her to betray her oaths to the Federation?”

Glen lifted an eyebrow, irked.  “And what exactly do they say to one another?”

“I don’t know,” Cynthia said, frustrated.  “I have not been able to establish any surveillance devices in Feingold’s cabin.”

“It would be a major scandal if you were caught,” Glen agreed.  Politicians often carried anti-surveillance devices with them, wherever they went.  There were just too many reporters willing to do anything to get a scoop, even spy on confidential meetings.  Privacy was a joke on Earth.  “It would certainly bring your career to an end.”

Cynthia shrugged.  “I am willing to take whatever risks are necessary to carry out my duties,” she said.  Glen privately suspected that her poise was largely an act.  Being caught running surveillance on a politician, even a colonial representative, would have consequences.  At the very least, she would be unceremoniously dismissed from the TFN.  And if it turned into a major scandal, she might find herself dumped on a prison colony.  “But I know nothing about what they have been saying to one another.”

“They could be talking about their home,” Glen pointed out.  “Or he could be seducing her.”

“I don’t think so,” Cynthia said.  “Your XO is clearly interested in women, rather than men.”

Glen rolled his eyes.  He hadn't noticed – and Cynthia’s file hadn't said anything about love interests.  Not that it would have, unless she was formally married or in a long-term partnership.  The TFN didn't bother to regulate it's personnel’s sexual activities beyond banning relationships between officers and crew of different ranks.  Or if someone put their relationship ahead of their duty.

“That might not stop him trying to seduce her,” he said, dryly.  “Do you have any proof that they are actually doing anything untoward?  Anything that might be counted as treasonable?”

“Well, no,” Cynthia said.  “But it is odd ...”

“I was an XO on Ark Royal,” Glen reminded her, crossly.  “There were quite a few cases where visitors to the ship tried to seduce some of the crew, even if they weren't interested.”

“He fixated on the one person on the ship who might share his attitudes,” Cynthia insisted.  “And she is spending time with him.  That is worrying.”

Glen sighed.  “But it doesn't prove anything,” he said.  “You cannot build a case against my XO out of the mere fact that she spends time with anyone, not even a colonial representative who happens to come from her homeworld.  They might appreciate the chance to speak to someone who shared the same accent.”

He shook his head, holding up his hand to prevent Cynthia from interrupting.  “All you seem to be doing is harassing my XO, which I am not inclined to tolerate.  Do you have any reason, anything at all, to be suspicious of her beyond talking to someone from her homeworld?”

“No,” Cynthia said.  “But I am obliged to always consider the worst case scenario ...”

“So you are,” Glen agreed.  “Might I point out that suspecting someone of disloyalty – and making it clear that you suspect them – is an excellent way to make them disloyal?”

It was one of the few life lessons he’d actually absorbed from Theodore.  One of his subordinates had been accused of industrial espionage and had been told, bluntly, to take a lie detector test or be fired.  He’d been proven innocent – the whole affair had been a coincidence – but he’d left soon afterwards, taking a bunch of confidential information with him and making it public.  Theodore had been censured by the rest of the family for his poor handling of the situation, yet that hadn't undone the damage he’d caused.  There were times when Glen wondered why his other brothers hadn’t taken advantage of the situation to unseat Theodore.

“Intelligence Officers do not have the luxury of giving suspects the benefit of the doubt,” Cynthia said.  “I have to assume the worst.”

“So you said,” Glen said.  His temper was fraying.  “But I have to trust my XO.  If you don’t have any real proof, I would appreciate it if you kept your suspicions to yourself.”

He watched her leave, for once not swinging her hips, then turned back to the datapad.  It would be just like Knight Corporation’s near-disaster, he told himself, if he believed that Sandy might be spying on him.  But the hell of it was that he could see Cynthia’s point too.  If the Bottleneck Republic did declare formal independence, which way would officers like Sandy jump?  And some of them were in a position to do real damage before they were rounded up and interned.

And if they did, he asked himself, would they be enemy nationals or traitors?

Gritting his teeth, he returned to the paperwork.  It had to be done.

And it might distract him from his new thoughts.

***
“You appear to be slipping,” Jess taunted, as she jumped backwards.  “Or are you too angry to think straight?”

Sandy scowled, then took another swipe at the Marine.  Jess was right; anger and frustration were driving her, rather than cool calculation.  But then, she had good reason to be angry and knew it.  Sweat trickled down her brow as she came after Jess, trying to land a blow on her before she could dodge.  The Marine seemed to move out the way effortlessly.

“You’re out of practice,” Jess sneered, leaning forward.  Sandy launched a punch at her jaw that missed when the Marine darted back.  “You call yourself a Marine?”

“I call myself a Commander,” Sandy said, as she came to a halt.  She was no Marine.  Sweat was dripping off her brow; angrily, she removed one of her gloves and wiped her hand across her forehead.  Jess always made Sandy push herself to the limit.  “Being a Marine isn't in the job description.”

“Good thing you’re not in the movies,” Jess said.  She didn't even seem to be sweating, Sandy noted.  Her powerful body, rippling with muscles, bore the scars of years in the Marine Corps.  “You’d be expected to lead away teams personally.”

Sandy snorted.  The movies had the Captain or the First Officer leading such teams in person, even though there were far more qualified personnel on even the smallest starship.  No starship crewman would board a pirate ship when the Marines could handle it without their presence.  Real life, as always, was less dramatic than the movies made it out to be.

“It’s been too long,” she said, looking around the training room.  Thankfully, Jess had reserved it for them and them alone, leaving the rest of her Marines in Marine Country.  “I think I need more exercise.”

“Just keep imagining the Governor’s face on the training holograms,” Jess advised.  “That should encourage you to hit harder.”

“Thank you,” Sandy said.  “And maybe the Intelligence Officer too.”

“Some of my Marines have already been ogling her,” Jess said, in tones of deepest disapproval.  “I had to tell them that she was so cold that their cocks would freeze and break off inside her.”

They shared a laugh.  Marines were technically outside the starship’s chain of command, with their CO reporting directly to the Captain.  It gave them a certain degree of independence, although both parties were careful not to put too much pressure on the relationship.  And, Sandy knew, affairs between Marines and crew were not uncommon.  They just tended not to last more than a few months.

“I’d like to get her into the training room,” Sandy said, as she stepped into the refresher and pulled off her sodden shirt.  Jess always made her sweat buckets when they worked out together.  The Marine was incapable of giving any less than her best, which was probably why Sandy rarely managed to land a punch.  “One or two blows and she would be much more respectful.”

She scowled at the thought, pulling off her shorts and dropping them in the basket.  The Intelligence Officer had been subtle, but not subtle enough to fool someone who had spent over thirty years in one war zone or another.  She was taking an interest in Sandy and, as far as Sandy knew, there was only one plausible reason for such interest.  Her homeworld was the core of the Bottleneck Republic.  On one hand, Sandy could understand why Cynthia would be concerned; on the other, she found the whole situation insulting.  Where had Cynthia been when Sandy had been risking her life fighting the Dragons?

In kindergarten, mainly, she thought, wryly.  Cynthia’s file was largely sealed, at least to a lowly Commander such as herself, but the few details that were publically available stated that Cynthia was barely twenty-two.  She’d joined the TFN at sixteen – that was rare, which made her wonder just what lay in the locked files – and had been streamlined into the Office of Naval Intelligence.  ONI, a law unto itself when it came to promotions, had made her a Commander (Intelligence) and assigned her to various starships.  Dauntless was merely her latest posting.

But she was even younger than the Captain ...

“Probably,” Jess agreed, as she followed Sandy into the compartment.  The Marine stripped bare in a smooth economical motion, threw her clothes into the basket and then stepped under the shower.  “But beating up Intelligence Officers would probably be taken as a sign of guilt.”

Sandy nodded, admiring Jess’s muscled back before looking away, feeling a twinge of guilt.  Marines didn't seem to care about showering together, but Sandy privately found Jess attractive enough to want to stare at her ... it wouldn't lead anywhere, she knew, no matter what happened.  Jess wasn't interested in women, merely men.  It was definitely a waste.

She pushed the thought aside, cooled the shower and allowed the water to wash the sweat from her body.  As always, she was aching slightly; she silently promised herself to spend more time working out with Jess in future.  There was a naval tradition that young crewmen and officers had to spend at least two hours exercising every day – or, if they wanted, they could spar with the Marines instead.  It was quicker, but few younger officers took them up on it, apart from the handful who were true martial artists.  Most of the crew learned nothing more than basic self-defence.

“I’m looking forward to meeting with the Hammers again,” Jess said.  She turned her shower off and stepped into the next room, her voice drifting back from the compartment.  “We had a good rapport with them during the T’Chaills Campaign.  I was just a lowly jarhead at the time, but we still had fun.”

Sandy had to smile.  The ground campaign on T’Chaills had been a nightmare, at least for the Federation Marines and Colonial Militia.  It had been the first world the Dragons had conquered when they’d leapt into space and the Admiralty had decided that merely isolating the planet and leaving it to die on the vine was insufficient.  Hundreds of thousands of ground troops had been shipped in to take the planet; nearly half of them had returned in body bags, if their bodies had been recovered.  The Dragons had known, perhaps, that they were doomed, but they’d resisted savagely.  By the time the planet had been declared pacified, millions of the Dragon settlers were dead.

Another reason for the Bottleneck Republic to be suspicious, she thought.  We would have preferred to smash the world from orbit.  Or just keep throwing asteroids until one got through the defences.

“I’m sure there will be an opportunity,” she said.  There were people she could ask on Fairfax who would give her a straight answer – or at least come out and tell her that the matter was classified.  “I’ll check for you and find out.”

She had to smile.  The Hammers – the finest front-line force in the Colonial Militia – had been deployed to support the Federation Navy once connections had been re-established between the Federation and the Bottleneck Republic.  She didn't know where they had gone after that, but if half of what she’d heard was true, there was still plenty of work for the ground forces.  The Dragons who had been abandoned on the formerly occupied worlds didn't seem to understand that the war was over.

“Please,” Jess said.

Sandy stepped into the next compartment and noted, to her relief, that her friend had already pulled on her tunic and day uniform.  Marines were excused from much of the Navy’s spit and polish, although nothing they genuinely needed was allowed to get dirty.  Sandy had considered, more than once, trying out for a transfer to the Marines, but she doubted she would even make it as a shuttle pilot.  The Marines still believed that each and every one of them had to be a rifleman first.

She dressed too, checked her appearance in the mirror, then stepped towards the hatch.

“I’ll spar with you again tomorrow,” Jess said.  Her scarred face twisted into a smile.  “By then, I expect you to have improved.”

Sandy rolled her eyes at the joke.  It wasn't as if she had time to do more than a few brief moments of exercise, even though matters were settling down.  There were crew rosters to make up, disciplinary matters to handle and diplomats to supervise.  One of the Governor’s staff had already tried to entice a young crewwoman into his bed and been surprised when he had been turned down.  Thankfully, he hadn't pushed matters any further or things might have become complicated.

Or perhaps not, she thought, as she left the compartment.  The Captain would not have stood for it – and his connections are better than hers.

But the thought irritated her for the rest of the day.

Chapter Nine

The Great Wall was terrifying.

Glen stared through Dauntless’s sensors at a rolling wall of pure energy that roared its rage through hyperspace.  Countless tiny whorls of energy spun free, slicing out to fade back into the background noise of the high-energy dimension, or falling back into the energy storm.  Dauntless was insignificant compared to the Great Wall; it stretched out for light years in all directions, blocking all forms of hyperspace travel.  The impassable zones caused by Bottleneck itself seemed almost tiny compared to the storm.  It had been there for thousands of years, according to the scientists, and might never burn itself out.

He disengaged from the sensors and fell back into his own body.  The bridge seemed reassuringly solid after staring out into hyperspace, even a computer-generated representation of the dimension.  Those who stared into hyperspace with their naked eyes often went mad, or refused to ever travel again.  Glen could understand both responses.  Hyperspace was a very inhuman domain.

“Two minutes to Bottleneck,” Helena reported, from the helm console.  “Portal generator online and standing by.”

Glen nodded.  It had been a long trip, made longer by having to deal with the Governor and her staff.  And Cynthia, who had still been sniffing around as if she expected to encounter conspiracy in the tubes or criminals in the holds.  But they’d made it as far as Bottleneck itself and, beyond the Great Wall, it was only two days to Fairfax.  They could endure another two days, he told himself firmly.  And they could unload the Governor and head onwards to the border.

“Take us out,” he ordered, when the timer reached zero.  “Now.”

Hyperspace twisted in front of them – there was a sense of falling that threatened to overwhelm him – and then they plunged back into normal space.  The inky darkness of normal space was a relief after the eerie lights of hyperspace; he heard a general sigh of relief running through the bridge as they realised they’d made it.  Even at the best of times, hyperspace travel wasn't safe ... and everyone knew that a handful of starships vanished every year to ‘causes unknown.’  Pirates, raiders ... or hyperspace storms.  No one ever came back to report.

“Transit complete,” Helena reported.  “Portal closing down; portal closed.”

“All ships have returned to normal space,” Danielle added.  “They appear to have made it without problems.”

Glen nodded, impatiently.  The trip had been rather boring, he had to admit; there had been hints that an unknown starship or two had taken a look at them, but the pirates – if pirates they were – had clearly thought better of picking on a heavy cruiser.  Or maybe the tactical sensors had merely been having flights of fancy.  Everyone who served in the Navy had heard tales of sensors suddenly reporting huge starships of unknown design, starships that appeared out of nowhere and then vanished as quickly as they had appeared.  No one could agree if they were illusions caused by hyperspace or reflections of real starships hundreds of thousands of light years away.  Groundhogs believed that spacers were merely making them up.

“Raise Bottleneck,” he ordered.  “Inform them that the Governor wishes to speak with the Admiral before we proceed.”

There was little to recommend the Bottleneck system apart from its location.  The odd fluctuations in hyperspace that had created the Great Wall had placed one star system right at the edge of the Bottleneck.  Humanity had settled a pair of Mars-like worlds and started the long task of terraforming them before the Dragons had occupied the system, blasting most of the settlements from orbit.  Now, the only real settlements were the colossal fleet base the Federation Navy had installed after the system had been liberated and a large domed colony on one of the planets, housing the sector government.  It would be a long time before the settlers could go outside the domes, he knew.  There was simply no interest in resuming the terraforming project – or funds to do so.

He smiled as the fleet base came into view.  It was a colossal sphere, bristling with weapons and sensor emplacements, surrounded by a handful of free-floating dockyard structures.  A handful of starfighters patrolled space, while – beyond the fleet base – a pair of fleet carriers and a superdreadnaught squadron were ready to respond to problems elsewhere in the sector.  It was a formidable display of strength and power, yet Glen couldn't help noticing what was missing.  There were only a handful of smaller ships in the system, the cruisers, frigates and destroyers the Navy needed to patrol space and escort convoys.  The TFN had decommissioned far too many of them.

“Captain, we’ve received a response to our signal,” Danielle said.  “Admiral Porter welcomes the Governor and her entourage to Bottleneck and invites her for a meeting before she resumes her travels.  And he’s also inviting you.”

Glen kept his displeasure off his face with an effort.  He didn’t know Admiral Porter personally, but it wasn't standard practice to invite the CO of a passing vessel to a meeting unless there were extenuating circumstances.   Maybe the Admiral wanted another naval officer present when he met the Governor ... or maybe he wanted to suck up to Glen because of his family connections.  In hindsight, Glen knew, he’d been lucky to avoid that for so long, but his unexpected promotion would have highlighted his family for all to see.

“Please inform the Admiral that we would be delighted to join him,” Glen lied, smoothly.  He keyed his console.  “XO to the bridge; I say again, XO to the bridge.”

Once Sandy joined them, Glen passed command to her and walked off the bridge, heading towards the Governor’s suite.  They had the finest cabins on the ship, he knew, which hadn't stopped them complaining that there was barely room to swing a cat.  The Governor, clearly having anticipated the invitation, was already waiting for him, with her two escorts at her side.  Glen fought down the urge to tell her that the two sycophants were not invited and, instead, escorted her to the shuttlebay.  The shuttle was already waiting for them.

The Governor gave him a surprised look as he rousted out the pilot and took the seat for himself.  “You're going to fly us?”

“I did manage to pass my piloting exam,” Glen assured her.  It wasn't a requirement for command track, but he’d fancied becoming a starfighter pilot before being told that his talents lay in starship command.  Flying a shuttle was nothing like flying a starfighter, yet it was the closest he'd ever come to being a fighter jock.  “Sit down and belt up.  This may be an uncomfortable ride.”

Space was deceptively quiet as he powered the shuttle out of the shuttlebay and flew towards the fleet base.  It was impossible to believe that there was a giant hyperspace storm just waiting for someone unwary enough to try to open a portal into hyperspace, or that there were places where it was literally impossible to even start generating a portal without causing an explosion.  But what you couldn't see could kill you, Glen reminded himself, as the shuttle drifted down towards its destination.  Hyperspace had absolutely no patience with people who tried to bend the rules.

He smiled as he landed the shuttle neatly in the fleet base’s shuttlebay.  Outside, the Admiral and his staff were already lining up, ready to suck up to the Governor.  Technically, she was Admiral Porter’s immediate political superior, although it wasn't actually clear just how far her authority stretched.  There was little case law and a great deal of speculation – and few legal experts actually wanted to find out the hard way.  

Glen hung back as the Governor stepped out and introduced herself to Admiral Porter, taking advantage of the Admiral’s preoccupation to study him and his staff.  His record was encouraging; Porter might not have commanded a starship, but he did have a good record in logistics and supply.  Maybe not a combat-orientated officer, Glen decided, yet not a bad choice for his current position.  But the way he was chatting to the Governor spoke against him.

Or maybe he just wants promotion, Glen thought, sourly.  Admirals and other flag ranks weren't just assigned on the basis of competence, even if the war had eliminated a number of Admirals who had put politics ahead of actually fighting.  The Governor’s report could make the difference between Admiral Porter being assigned to Earth Base or being invited to leave the service during the next RIF.  God knew there were people questioning the wisdom of keeping Bottleneck Station up and running.  It wasn't as if it were in a good position to support either the nearby sector or the Fairfax Cluster.

Up close, Admiral Porter looked well-meaning, Glen decided as they shook hands.  If the Admiral was aware of Glen’s connections, it was difficult to be sure ... but then, the Governor probably overshadowed him.  Glen stayed back as the Admiral led the Governor into a small conference room – his senior staff dispersed back to their duties, no doubt to their relief – and sat away from both of them.  He wanted to see how they interacted, not take part in the discussion himself.

“I must say I’m very relieved that a Governor has been finally assigned to the Fairfax Cluster,” the Admiral said, once they had drained their fund of small talk.  “There hasn't been a Governor since Bottleneck was occupied – and the last one vanished without a trace.”

Glen scowled, inwardly.  He’d reviewed some of the media broadcasts and discovered the implication that the previous Governor had been assassinated by the colonials.  The truth was that he'd fled his post when it had become clear that Bottleneck was going to fall, only to be lost somewhere in transit.  There was no indication that the Dragons had ever taken him prisoner, suggesting that his ship had been destroyed.  But no one, Glen suspected, would ever know for sure.

“I look forward to taking up my role,” Governor Wu said.  The wine the Admiral’s staff had given them was nothing like as expensive as the Governor’s, Glen noted, but it was still pricy.  “However, we lack a comprehensive briefing on the state of the colonies themselves.”

“And the military situation, sir,” Glen added.  It would always be his first concern, whatever his brothers said.  “We’re six months out of date.”

“My Intelligence Officer has prepared a briefing,” Admiral Porter said.  He nodded to a lanky young man with oddly-old eyes.  “Lieutenant Rogers, if you please ...?”

The young man tapped a switch, activating the holographic display.  “I have prepared a full infodump for you,” he began, “but I will touch on the principal matters now.  The Fairfax Cluster is caught between several competing strands of thought, at least two of which pose a danger to the integrity of the Federation.  It is the prediction of my staff that we will see a crisis within the next year – two at the most.”

Glen scowled.  Politically-driven briefings had been a headache for his brothers, but the military had largely avoided them – or so he’d thought.  Now, of course, the simplicity of the war had been replaced by the chaos the war had left in its wake.  And Intelligence Officers could be relied upon to spin the briefing to ensure that their superiors heard what they wanted to hear – or what their subordinates wanted them to hear.  It wasn't always the same thing.

“To summarise, the Fairfax Cluster is still building up its military at an astonishing rate,” Rogers continued.  “Despite the formal end of the war, they continue to spend a sizable percentage of their combined GPP on starships, planetary defences and supporting facilities.  Put in perspective, if the Federation spent a similar amount of its income on the TFN, the fleet would include millions of superdreadnaughts and fleet carriers – and billions of crewmen.  They have also purchased a considerable number of military starships from the Federation, although such purchases have tailed off in recent years.

“This leaves us with a single worrying question.  Why, exactly, are they building up their fleet?

“The analysts have different opinions.  Some point to the constant menace of raiders along the edge of human-settled space and insist that the Colonial Militia intends to suppress the pirates.  Others think that the strong anti-alien streak in colonial thought will manifest itself in genocide, attacks on the remaining Dragon worlds.  And still others believe that the Fairfax Cluster intends to declare independence.”

Glen listened as the facts and figures washed over his head.  It did sound impressive, he had to admit – and it would be even more impressive to a civilian.  But then, the TFN’s total hull numbers were also impressive, until one realised that they were rarely concentrated in one place.  Even the climatic battles of the war hadn't absorbed more than thirty percent of the TFN.  The Colonial Militia might be a formidable force if gathered together, but it was much less dangerous if it were spread out over dozens of light years.

“I have a question,” Glen said, as Rogers paused for breath.  “How many raider attacks have there been along the borderlines?”

“There have been hundreds of reported attacks, ranging from lost starships to actual raids on planetary colonies,” Rogers said.  “However, relatively few of those attacks have actually been verified by TFN personnel.”

Governor Wu leaned forward.  “And are these attacks a genuine threat?”

“The Fairfax Cluster could take steps to minimise them,” Rogers said, simply.  “We learned very quickly that convoys were almost always effective against pirates – or even light Dragon raiding squadrons.  But the Colonial Militia rarely bothers to insist that shipping be convoyed, leaving escorts a matter of chance rather than careful planning.  They also don't station starships in every threatened star system, even though they could.”

Glen suspected that Rogers was deliberately minimising part of the truth.  His brothers had forced a basic understanding of galactic economics into his head, including the economies of scale that were possible when large corporations handled interstellar shipping.  Knight Corporation could afford to wait for a convoy, or even pay for the licences to arm their freighters.  It wasn't an option for the smaller shipping companies, let alone an independent trader.  They couldn't afford the penalties they would have to pay for delayed arrival, nor did they have the clout to avoid having such clauses inserted into their contracts.  

Nor could the TFN verify the attacks.  As far as Glen knew, Dauntless would be the first TFN ship to visit the region for several years.  Even during the final offensive, most of the fighting in the sector had been carried out by the Colonial Militia.  The TFN hadn't wanted to divert starships when invading and occupying Sphere-Prime might have ended the war.  From their point of view, the campaign had been an unnecessary diversion.

But it might be months before anyone even knew that there had been an attack, he thought, grimly.  Communications along the edge of explored space were always poor.  The entire colony might be dead and no one would notice until a ship visited on a routine mission.

He scowled at the thought.  The Fairfax Cluster hadn't had an FTL network until the Federation had loaned them the relay stations, after the war.  But it had provided yet another source of friction between the Federation and the Colonials.  The Federation produced much of the entertainment, news broadcasts and everything else on the network – and charged a stiff fee for anyone who wanted to use it.  In turn, the colonials preferred to rely on starships ... and besides, the network didn't reach everywhere.  Most of the border had no relay stations at all.

“So they prefer to leave the border undefended rather than take steps to deal with the situation.” Governor Wu said, with heavy satisfaction.  “That is one matter I will deal with at once.”

“You would need to call for escorts from the TFN,” Glen pointed out, before he could stop himself.  He had a feeling that the Colonial Militia wouldn't be capable of meeting the Governor’s demands, no matter what it wanted to do.  “It would certainly endear the Federation to them if we stopped the raider attacks.”

“They have more than enough starships to handle a basic convoy system,” Rogers said.  He clearly knew which side of the case to present.  “All they need is a push.”

Glen sighed, inwardly.  At the very least, shipping times within the cluster would become much longer, doing untold economic damage.  At worst, the colonials would see it as another sign of meddling by people who knew nothing of what was actually going on.  And they would be right.

“There are other issues,” Rogers continued.  “For example, alien refugee camps have been largely starved of resources since the end of the war.  The colonies have the responsibility for feeding the aliens, but they have been slacking off ...”

“I have brought supplies for the camps,” Governor Wu interrupted.  “It will make for a PR opportunity, if nothing else.”

Glen stared at her.  That was what was in the freighters?  Supplies for the aliens?

But the Governor was right.  It would go down well on Earth.  Humans supporting aliens who couldn't look after themselves; aliens who had already been liberated from the Dragons ... aliens who had been at the mercy of cruel humans unwilling to look past the hatreds of the war.  And the colonies would be furious.  Six freighters worth of food and supplies, brought all the way from Earth ... the costs would have been staggering, all for a PR stunt.  It wouldn't just be the Fairfax Cluster that would be up in arms.

Sighing inwardly, he settled back in his chair, mentally compiling his report to Admiral Patterson – and his brothers.  The situation in the Cluster was quite bad enough without pouring fuel on the fire.  Surely, there had to be something they could do ...

Chapter Ten

Susan MacDonald looked out over the refugee camp and knew despair.

It had only been intended as a temporary settlement.  The Dragons – and the aliens they had used as slaves – were not welcome on many worlds in the Fairfax Cluster.  Moving them to Tyson’s Rest had seemed a solution to the problem of just what to do with the non-human refugees, at least until shipping could be arranged to their homeworlds.  But the shipping had been delayed and the camp had grown and grown until it held upwards of four hundred thousand aliens, all crammed far too closely together.  

The local authorities had given the camp the bare minimum.  A handful of prefabricated buildings, a couple of water and food processors ... and very little else.  There were refugees suffering from medical conditions that could be treated easily, if the supplies had been made available ... but they were not.  Every time Susan spoke to the local authorities, she was reminded that the planet’s human population didn't want the aliens anywhere near their territory.  There were too many starving or suffering humans for anything to be spared for the aliens.

She scowled as she caught sight of a handful of aliens making their slow way to the food tables.  The Mice – as humans had come to call them – were largely harmless, barely able to lift a finger in their own defence.  Unsurprisingly, the Dragons had simply overwhelmed them and then put the small aliens to work as slaves.  They’d been victims, just as much as the humans who had also been enslaved, but most of the human race didn't care to recognise it.  And their homeworld was a polluted cinder.  They literally had nowhere to go.

Shaking her head, she started to walk back to her tent.  There, she could write yet another missive to the Refugee Commission, although she had a sneaking suspicion that it would be useless.  The Fairfax Cluster didn't give a shit about the alien refugees and the Federation had too much else to worry about in the aftermath of the war.  Even the Liberal-Progressives understood that it would be electoral suicide to care too much about aliens, even though the Mice had been slaves until the Federation had liberated them.  There would be little additional help forthcoming, no matter what she said ...

She ran through the calculations as she walked.  No matter what she did, they would have to cut rations again by the end of the week.  There just weren’t enough supplies for everyone in the refugee camp.  And they were running short of everything else too, from firewood to bedding.  The local authorities had even had the nerve to file an environmental impact statement and demand compensation from the Refugee Commission.  If it wasn't the only environmental impact statement filed in the entire cluster, Susan would eat her hat.

Her tent was the only place in the camp she could be assured of some privacy – and only then when the rest of her staff were absent.  She sagged the moment she closed the flap behind her, fighting down a tidal wave of despair that threatened to overwhelm her.  Her staff, such as they were, were just as badly affected.  She’d seen half of them leave, unable to bear it any longer.  And the remainder were cracking too.

Damn them, she thought, as she sat down at the desk.  Damn them all.

***
Lieutenant Tobias Jackson sat in his command chair, such as it was, and studied the near-orbit display.  There was little in orbit, apart from a handful of satellites and automated weapons platforms intended to deter pirates.  Tyson’s Rest wasn’t an industrial powerhouse and was unlikely to become one, not after the Dragons had savaged the original settlers and forced them to take in refugees just to ensure that their planet remained viable.  It would be decades before the planet recovered from the war.

The single manned orbital weapons platform was tiny, compared to the giant battlestations that guarded Earth or the other Core Worlds.  Tobias had no illusions about the relative importance of Tyson’s Rest or the reason he’d been assigned to the insignificant world.  The Colonial Militia was not a great believer in spit and polish, but it did have its standards and Tobias had offended against them.  If he hadn't had an excellent combat record, he suspected that he would have been dismissed rather than exiled.  But Tyson’s Rest wasn't that bad a place to defend, he had to admit.  And the handful of local-born crewmen were shaping up nicely ...

He leaned forward as an alarm shrilled.  Tyson’s Rest saw almost no traffic, apart from a handful of freighters and a warship or two every month.  The planet had little to offer the Fairfax Cluster, let alone the rest of the galaxy.  Hell, its farms hadn’t recovered from the occupation or the damage the Dragons had inflicted before they abandoned the world.  But now ... nine portals opened in quick succession, disgorging a handful of warships.  Their IFFs read out as Colonial Militia, but Tobias felt a thrill of alarm as he studied their deployment.  It wasn't like the Militia to fly in such a tight formation ...

“Sound the alert,” he ordered.  Maybe he was overreacting, but his senses were telling him that something was badly wrong.  “Tell the planet to raise the alarm ...”

Red lights lit up on his console as the enemy targeting sensors came online, sweeping through space and locking onto the orbital weapons platforms.  Tobias swore out loud, then hit the emergency alert, flash-waking his defences.  He’d kept everything stepped down to ensure that the equipment’s lifespan was prolonged as much as possible, but right now that was starting to look like a mistake.  His targeting sensors came to life, too late.  The newcomers were already opening fire, unleashing a spread of missiles towards the automated platform.

“Send an emergency distress signal, then trigger a core dump,” he ordered, tightly.  The platform would not stand up to the incoming fire.  There was no time to abandon the platform and hope that the enemy didn't pick off the lifepods before they could descend into the planet’s atmosphere.  “And then ...”

The missiles struck home and the world vanished in a blinding flash of light.

***
“All targets destroyed, sir,” Dana reported.

Jason allowed himself a tight smile as Havoc entered planetary orbit.  He'd worried about just what sort of defences were in place above Tyson’s Rest – and about how reliable some of the newer crewmen might be – but it seemed that their intelligence had been right on the money.  The orbital weapons platform hadn't managed to get a single shot off before it had been destroyed; it hadn't even activated its point defence.  Such carelessness deserved it’s just reward.

“Good,” he said.  “Lock weapons on the designated list of targets.”

There was a long pause as Dana compared the list of targets to reality.  They’d drawn up a list of potential targets, but their intelligence on Tyson’s Rest might have been unreliable.  But it seemed that everything was as precise as he’d dared to hope.  The targeting list – the spaceport, the government installations, the food stores, the power plants, the radio stations – were ready and waiting to be hit.  There were no PDCs that might force his ships away from the planet.

“Weapons locked,” Dana said.  “Ready to fire.”

Jason reached down and placed his hand on his pistol.  Most of his crew would do anything for money, but he wasn't sure how far he could trust the newcomers.  They might balk at mass slaughter of humans, even if they would gladly scorch an alien homeworld and then piss on the ashes.  And if someone did decide to refuse his authority, they would have to be shot before they could infect others.  The last thing he needed was a mutiny on his command deck.

“Fire,” he ordered.

Havoc had originally been built to serve in the Federation Navy prior to the actual outbreak of war.  Oddly, she’d had few ship-to-ship weapons at the time; she’d been configured to drop KEWs on planet-side targets.  Reading between the lines, Jason suspected that the design had actually been intended to stamp the Federation’s authority onto rebellious worlds; the Colonial Militia might have modified the ship to carry modern weapons, but they’d left the KEW racks in place.  What had been intended for deployment in support of the liberation of the occupied worlds would now be turned against them.

He watched, keeping one eye on his bridge crew, as the KEWs fell through the planet’s atmosphere and struck their targets.  There were no forcefields protecting the installations, no point defence to break up or deflect the projectiles before it was too late.  One by one, the targets were smashed flat, shattering any hope of ground-side resistance.  They would never be able to coordinate a response.

But we’re not here to occupy the world, he thought, coldly.  There had been cases of pirates taking entire worlds and declaring themselves independent warlords, but the Federation Navy or the Colonial Militia usually made short work of them.  Once, of course, they knew that there was a problem they had to tackle.  We’re just here to make a mess.

“Deploy the troops,” he ordered, calmly.  No one seemed to have any objections to bombarding the planet – or, if they had, they'd kept them to themselves.  “I want those aliens dead.”

“Aye, sir,” Dana said.  “The shuttles are on their way.”

***
Susan felt the ground shake and stood up, puzzled.  Her communicator, linking her to the planetary communications network, let out a squeal and then fell silent.  Puzzled, she walked out of the tent and looked to the north.  A giant plume of smoke was rising up into the air.  If she recalled correctly, she realised, there was a military base in that direction.  The local government had made it clear that their soldiers would be keeping an eye on the aliens and wouldn't hesitate to intervene if the shit hit the fan.  Susan remembered thinking that the aliens were unlikely to cause trouble – and that maintaining the garrison was a cost the planetary government could ill afford.  Now ...

She looked up as she heard the screech of assault shuttles passing through the air.  Four heavy-lift shuttles passed directly overhead, releasing a swarm of armoured men who dropped down to the ground and landed directly outside the refugee camp.  Susan stared in disbelief, then horror, as the intruders lifted their weapons and opened fire.  Bolts of brilliant white light tore through the aliens, ripping their bodies to sheds.  It was a massacre.  Even if the Mice had been as violent and aggressive as humans – or Dragons – they wouldn't have been able to crack the armoured combat suits with their bare hands.  The local government might believe that everyone had the right to bear arms, but it had been made clear to her that right only extended to humans.  There were no weapons in the camp at all.

Susan threw herself to the ground as weapons fire flashed over her head, setting fire to the tent behind her.  Desperately, she started to crawl away, hoping to reach the edge of the camp and escape into the countryside.  The sound of alien throats screaming died away as the intruders completed their task; Susan glanced back and saw the armoured figures carefully making their way through the remains of the camp, blasting alien bodies just to make sure they were dead.  She felt sick and helpless as she realised just how much the intruders hated aliens, just how determined they were to make sure that they wiped out the entire camp.  The prefabricated buildings she’d had to argue for hours to obtain were forced open and searched, her handful of staff forced out into the open.  She tried to crawl faster, but it was too late.  An armoured figure came after her, picked her up effortlessly and carried her back towards the centre of the camp.

It was a scene from hell.  Alien bodies lay everywhere, leaking eerie green blood on the ground.  Some were still twitching, but she suspected that they were all dead.  The alien biology was not fully understood, yet it seemed impossible that anything could survive a direct hit from a plasma weapon.  Humans had been known to expire from a glancing blow, simply through shock.  

She looked up at her captor as she was thrust to the ground and wondered, vaguely, just what would happen to them.  Rape?  Death?  Or would they be left alone, in the midst of the graveyard their camp had become.  Clarissa, the youngest of her staff, cried out as her clothes were pulled from her body, ripped away with armoured strength.  Susan braced herself as best as she could for the ordeal she knew was coming, but nothing happened.  Clarissa was allowed to sink to the ground and cover herself as best she could.

Puzzled, she waited.  She could do nothing else.

“This camp was an abomination,” one of the armoured figures said.  “Aliens treated well, while humans starve.  Remember.”

Susan stared at him, dimly aware that she was in shock.  She should be panicking, or trying to fight or flee ... instead, all she could do was wait.  He was talking nonsense, she knew; the aliens had been on the verge of starvation, no matter what was happening elsewhere on Tyson’s Rest.  But there was no point in arguing.  She closed her eyes, expecting to be killed or raped ... and then, when she opened them, she saw the armoured figures march away.  Their shuttles descended to the ground; they marched onboard and vanished, leaving the remains of the camp alone.  Susan stared as they rose upwards, clawing for sky.  They’d been left alive ...

Remember, the figure had said.  They’d been left alive to tell the universe what had happened on Tyson’s Rest.

Susan stared down at the bodies and swore that she would.  The universe might not have cared about the aliens while they were alive, but now there had been a massacre she was sure they would care.  She knew enough about the media to know that blood and guts excited them more than anything else, no matter how important.  Gritting her teeth, she stepped over and wrapped her arms around the sobbing Clarissa.  There would be justice.

***
“Davis seems to have forgotten the mission briefing,” Jason observed, as he viewed the live feed from the armoured troops.  The mercenaries he’d hired were the scum of the universe, quite literally.  Most of them had been kicked out of various planetary militaries and had gravitated into the shadowy universe of fighting for hire.  “You can remind him of the rules, can't you?”

Dana gave him a girlish smile that made half the bridge crew shudder.  “Of course, sir,” she assured him, brightly.  “I shall see to it personally.”

Jason smiled, coldly.  He had few moral objections to anything these days, but he’d issued specific orders; the humans in the refugee camp were to remain unharmed, if possible.  There was no way their safety could be guaranteed – only a politician could believe that Murphy didn't play a role in any sort of military deployment – yet if they survived the first attack, his orders had been clear.  The message was to be passed on ... and then they were to be abandoned, left in the camp.  There was no room in those orders for molesting one of the camp workers.

“Filthy alien lovers,” one of his crew muttered.  There was a general mummer of agreement.  “We should just have killed them all.  Or that silly bitch could have made herself useful up here ...”

“I ordered that they were to remain alive,” Jason interrupted, cutting the speaker off.  It was an understandable attitude – there were few in the Fairfax Cluster who would admit any sympathy for aliens – but he was not about to allow it to interfere with his authority.  “And we didn't have time for any fun and games.”

He checked the sensors again, then smiled to himself.  The strikes against the planet-side installations had been perfect.  A week or two would see most of the locals on the brink of starvation, assuming that they kept supplies in their homesteads.  Even if the local government somehow managed to regenerate itself, the locals would have real difficulty in feeding themselves without sparking a civil war.  Those who did have food would be unlikely to share it when their own families were at risk.

“All troops have returned to their ships,” Dana reported.  She sounded rather amused by the whole affair.  “No casualties.”

“Apart from Davis,” Jason said.  Dana wouldn't kill him, but she would make him wish he were dead.  Being hurt and humiliated by such a slight girl wouldn't make him popular among his fellows.  “General signal to all ships; pull back and open portals as soon as we reach minimum safe distance.”

His smile grew wider as the helmsman took Havoc out of orbit.  The orbital defences might have been smashed, but standard procedure dictated that a copy of the orbital station’s sensor readings would have been sent to the ground.  When someone picked up the emergency signal and realised that Tyson’s Folly had been attacked, they would investigate – and they would find the records and discover that a fleet of Colonial Militia starships had been responsible.  

All just as Ford wanted, he thought, with heavy satisfaction.  Aliens dead, the planet in chaos and the Colonial Militia taking the blame.

He had no idea why Ford wanted to butcher aliens and have the blame laid on the Colonial Militia, but he didn't care either.  All that mattered was keeping his ships and men going, whatever it took.  And if they were slaughtering aliens ...

... For most of his crew, that would be just the icing on the cake.